Scripted
by Panzer Panda
Summary: All Demyx wants from his life is to play music under a spotlight. Guess he's got a handful of stunning-but-icy actor, disapproving parents, crazy weather and erratic musical play productions to go through before he gets there.-Zemyx AU-
1. Chapter 1

**Warnings: The overall story may contain (or reference to) alcohol consumption, infrequent strong language, mild violence, disturbing imagery, sexual content, setting confusion and gratuitous British spelling. This story also portrays several homosexual relationships between various characters. If you are sensitive to any of the above, I don't recommend you proceed reading.**

**Pairings (eventual and established): Zexion-Demyx, Marluxia-Vexen, Saix-Xemnas, Axel-Roxas**

_**A/N:  
24/12/09: Say 'hi' to "Scripted", the brainchild of a desperate attempt to write an actual novel-sized fic. Hopefully it works. Powered by tea, pistachio nuts, a love for the characters, and love for the fandom. Beware, this baby's a long one.**_

_**04/03/09: Progress on the whole is at approximately 50%! Yay. (Added 'Warnings' and 'Pairings' just so that no unsuspecting reader walks into something they don't want.)  
**_

_**

* * *

**_**Scripted**_**  
Prologue**_**  
ACT ONE**

It was on a stunningly bright and undoubtedly beautiful afternoon that Demyx dramatically swept a myriad of bills off of his desk and spontaneously decided that his entire career was in shambles. He had to do so over the noise of papers, pens and paperweights cluttering to the ground, whilst scratching at the musty grey sweatshirt that was a size too large for him.

Demyx was, so to say, a sweet kid. He'd grown up fine, getting his fair share of lectures from the folks but not getting caught for every other school rule he broke. He'd had a good life all up until he was nineteen and fresh-faced, happily graduated and ready to get out into the world. After that things started going downhill.

His parents had spent hours lecturing him, attempting him to persuade not to go into music, because there were millions of musicians just like him who ended up clinking a banjo on the side of the street. A long genealogy of a family of internationally-renowned researchers ending in a guy clinking a banjo on a grimy street probably didn't look good on the papers, after all. Demyx appreciated the sentiment, he really did, but at that time he'd told them that music was his calling. Someday they were going to see huge posters with Demyx's name on them and be sent hundred-dollar concert tickets. Basically he gave them the entire foolish speech that any son or daughter gives their parents after rejecting their parents' choice of career for them, the one that could have been made concise in one linguistically-unapproved phrase and two words but instead drag into weeks of screaming and slamming doors.

His sexuality was another matter altogether, and he hardly appreciated them trying to put it with the 'career choice issue'.

They stopped calling him a year ago, after he'd plunged into a financial impasse. He really didn't miss the phone calls, overall.

"Marluxia!" he cried aloud, both hands on the doorframe that his body was up against, ignoring the pungent scent of flowers that wafted from his roommate's room.

If there had been anyone that Demyx had trusted and confided in all this awful adult life, it had been Marluxia. Said confidante, trusted friend and flatmate made a noise that sounded like a miniature earthquake and a moan put together. "Hnnn?" came the muffled voice from beneath an array of flower-patterned quilts and covers. A large fair hand emerged from the pile, shoving it back and revealing Marluxia's dishevelled, weary form. He was still wearing the black tee-shirt ('_...and if I did get smart with you, would you know?'_ Demyx's eyes caught the white text spread across it momentarily) that he'd went out in the night before.

Demyx raised an eyebrow when Marluxia sat up in bed and looked at him with deep blue eyes framed with sleep-smudged eyeliner. Marluxia may or may not have looked adorable in his sleep-induced bleariness if it were not for the black gobs circling his eyes like a horror movie makeup job gone very bad. "What is it, Demyx?" Marluxia mumbled, yawning into his hand. "I know it's afternoon already, but I don't have rehearsal-"

Marluxia was the most brilliant playwright Demyx knew. Heck, he was the _only_ playwright Demyx knew, but he was still brilliant. Back in college, it had been how they'd met- Marluxia coming right up to him and asking him some random story-related question, and somehow a question turned into conversation and, hello, roommate. And then, Marluxia River was a deconstructed hippie if there was one, down to his very last name. Probably born into the wrong generation. The basic facts about him came down to the fact that he was one year older than Demyx, twenty years wiser, that he wrote, and wrote some more, and if you ever even went so far as to put a sharp surface capable of incision anywhere within five feet of his plants he would slowly and cheerfully eviscerate you.

Demyx sucked in a breath, ignoring the scary sight of Marluxia with smudged black eyeliner, and spurred out the words: "My career is broken, Marly. Nothing's gone right. Nothing." At this his raised his hands to the heavens, staring up in vast exasperation. "Nothing!"

"...Okay," was all his pink-haired roommate answered with as he rolled out of bed, covers and all, and proceeded to check himself in the dresser mirror, completely ignoring Demyx's demonstration. "Well," Marluxia muttered with a touch of breathlessness and cloudy sleepiness, "if you ever listened to me tell you about the production, there's a position for a musician open," he said, dabbing a cotton square with makeup remover and fruitlessly dabbing at the horror-esque dark gobs around his eyes.

While they had their concrete similarities, the main distinction between the roommates was that Marluxia was the employed one, who had secured himself a play to attend the rehearsal for every weekday. It would be his debut into the theatrical world as a playwright. Marluxia had written an array of singularly _awesome _romance novels under a penname just to get by, but he'd always told Demyx how being a playwright had been his one true desire. Marluxia was like the anonymous, half-hearted Nicholas Sparks of his own generation, and yet he'd seen a calling in writing plays that had never been there in novels, it seemed.

The blond paused, sucking in a breath. He thought about it: Background musician, tinkering at a sitar for money and going generally unnoticed. "...That's not the job I want, Marls. To just play while everybody's' eyes are on the people up on stage? Just play in the background, mostly ignored? Does that sound like fun to you?"

The pink-haired man scoffed, his entire muscular frame moving with him he closed one eye and trailed a cotton pad over it. He only succeeded in further messing up the makeup."Does it sound fun to you that I have to write the _entire_ storyline and nobody _ever_ sees _me_ on stage? It's not like inspiration comes easily either," Marluxia retorted. "Writer's block has had me out of commission for two weeks, Demyx. Two weeks. But I'm still here and I'm still hired. You should at least try for the job, if your career's as shattered as you make it out to be." He sounded a little more awake this time, running a hand through his mussed-up locks of hair.

Demyx weakly offered, "Can't I just, kinda... be a bit of a house guy for a bit? I'll cook you dinner and stuff..? I- I'll clean the toilet," he said with a strange resolution, even as he shuddered at the thought.

"House wife, you mean?" He turned to look at Demyx, smiling in dry amusement. "Demyx, as much as I love you, I can't pay the bills for both of us, darling. Playwrights work for the love of the job, not the wads of green one may or may not get." In a silent gesture, he pointed to the cracks in the wall behind his dresser, and still behind the long shelf of fragrant herbal plants he kept.

Even for people sharing a tiny apartment, they still couldn't afford a much better one. Their home was pretty much the standard crappy fifteenth-floor city apartment, with low running water pressure and paper-thin walls. Still, it was home, and Marluxia's balcony had a magnificent view of the crescent-shaped bay outside. It wasn't exactly inconveniently located, either, being located directly across from a supermarket and a few minutes from the beach.

The blond musician's face fell as Marluxia pushed past him through the doorway, making his way to the bathroom. "Marls! Help me!" he exclaimed urgently.

"Join the play production!" Marluxia yelled back, slamming the door on his face.

Demyx heaved a tired sigh and leaned against said door. Even if he really did need the money for both of them, he was reluctant to think about it. "What were you out doing last night anyway? I don't even remember when you got back," he queried, not willing to push the employment topic any further for a while.

It wasn't as if it was uncommon that Marluxia would spend the night out for an obscenely long time and come back home at some ungodly hour, but most of the time his reasons were completely different. Though, quite a notable percentage of them were at least remotely connected to some boyfriend he had that Demyx never met.

"Date went well. I got back at six this morning. Vexen took me back in his car." The affection in his voice was undeniable, even when muffled through the creaky door. "He's the sweetest _ever,_ you know."

"Date went _really_ well," Demyx grumbled, standing up and heading off to make coffee. He hadn't met the guy, but if there was one thing that he could be spared of it was the gory details of Marluxia's 'adventures' (said flatmate had used those words specifically, to Demyx's dismay) with his boyfriend at the backstage area of the production.

- - - - -

Out of sheer tradition, they ate dinner together in the kitchen. They had covered the dining table in the living room with so many sheets of Demyx's written music and Marluxia's story notes that it was long past saving, or risking eating anything heavier than a snack on, so they'd wordlessly settled for the textured, granite-grey kitchen counter since last year. Still, the apartment was a charming one, despite the distinct property of being extremely cramped, and whatever space provided was often filled with paper: bills, music, notes, et al.

Demyx tore into his sandwich, tasting about six different herbs probably in the order that Marluxia had applied them, and a distinct lack of meat. He cast his roommate a dubious look that had become something of a tradition between themselves. Mouth full, Demyx grumbled, "I still don't know how you get the build you have when I've never seen you eat one piece of meat since I met you. That's _hard_, man!"

Wiping his mouth with a paper napkin, Marluxia gave him the evil eye. "Swallow before you talk or you might get choked," he admonished. "...And I work out."

"I don't see you doing that either."

"Sex is a very good form of exercise, Demyx."

Demyx sputtered out chunks of lettuce and mayonnaise, wordlessly taking the paper napkin Marluxia offered him and wiping his mouth. "Too much information," he whimpered, slipping off the chair he was on to go turn on the fluorescent light. The warm sunlight that had drifted in from the kitchen window and originally painted the walls a brilliant shade of red and orange was gone now, replaced by sad tinges of purple. Demyx blinked as the initially blinding fluorescent light flickered on, and then he settled back into the chair and remorsefully began to dig back into a sandwich he was too hungry to deny himself of.

"So have you thought about it?" Marluxia enquired with a certain air of elegance as he finished his sandwich and brushed crumbs cleanly onto the paper napkin he'd eaten over.

"'Bout what?"

The man looked at him in disbelief, looking a cross between perplexed, surprised and offended. "Joining the play production," he said as he slid off his chair and threw the folded-up paper napkin into the garbage bin. Marluxia was a well-built guy, and when he stood in the narrow, cramped spaces of the kitchen between the cookery counter, fridge and counters, he had a certain distinct air about himself. Particularly with his arms akimbo and when he looked at his roommate with a cross look.

The blond blinked before it registered. "Oh yeah.. yeah. I thought I might as well join. I don't have any options."

Marluxia rolled his eyes, turning to open the refrigerator and pull out a carton of apple juice. "Great. I'll wake you up at nine tomorrow and we'll be out the door by an hour and a half later, all right?" he said, taking a long direct swig from the carton before heading off into his room, not waiting for Demyx to reply. "I'm going to go wrestle my muse and try to crap out another five pages of script."

Another distinct difference between the two of them was that when Demyx wrote music, he _wrote music_ and if you left him alone for four hours you could come back and he'd have one song for every season. Leave Marluxia alone for four hours and you'd probably find him in a sobbing mess because he'd been unable to produce a satisfactory hundred words of script for the play. Demyx wrote, wrote and _wrote_ his butt off but in the end, it wasn't as if he had anybody other than Marluxia who would even give him half an ear to listen. Marluxia, however, hadn't been able to write lately.

It wasn't an inspiration problem, he said. No. To quote, it was just a while yet until he could find his muse- and when he would, the miracles would be sprung unto paper. Until then.. well. Demyx gave a rueful smile at the door hanger that had been occupying Marluxia's door for the last three months: an amateur paper cut-out that read "_Busy- looking for muse"._

- - - - -

A sleep-deprived Demyx groaned into a cup of exceptionally bitter coffee, watching as the blurry form of Marluxia navigated around the darkness of the kitchen in a morning. "I don't get how you can be up this early," he mumbled, as if nine in the morning was really early by most humans' standards.

Marluxia just made an amused snort, shuffling about the kitchen in his red apron with a frying pan and spatula at hand, casting a tired smile at Demyx. "I get sleep-deprived and tired, like everyone does to keep their jobs on that little place we call Planet Earth," he said as he skilfully flipped over the omelette frying on the stove, before glancing back at his roommate. "Remember that we need to go at around ten-thirty."

Demyx groaned loudly, flopping face-first upon the questionably clean kitchen counter. "Why are you so cheery at nine in the freezin' cold rainy season morning?"

"Because it's a fantastic work day and I have a wonderful crew of creative individuals waiting for me at the theatre," Marluxia responded with less vigour than he probably should have.

He wasn't intensely jealous of Marluxia, per se, but Demyx did have his moments wherein he wondered why the hippie, writers-blocked roommate of his was the taken, employed one. He smiled ruefully to himself and took a sip of the too-bitter coffee, cursing every moment he even spent envying his own roommate. "Save me some omelette, I'm gonna go freshen up," he said, finishing the rest of the coffee with an abrupt swallow and setting it in the sink.

Leaving Marluxia to finish cooking, he ambled into the bathroom to start up a shower.

It was made apparent the moment he got out that it was going to be an obstinately gloomy day. The sun had finally peered out from behind the thick curtain of grey clouds, casting an oppressed, colourless sheen of ligth over the bay. A light, occasional rumble of thunder could be heard in the distance, and lighting flashes illuminated the world with a blink of white every so often. The sight of the city in the morning was a depressing one this morning, especially with the wintery air it boasted.

Demyx looked away from the wide window view at the kitchen, instead eyeing his own uneaten scrap of omelette set on the kitchen counter. Evidently Marluxia had left it there for him, as his roommate had disappeared from the place- presumably to his own room to get dressed and ready for the day ahead. Still dripping with shower water, Demyx didn't even bother getting dressed, instead approaching the omelette with greed. His stomach grumbled with need for good cooking, even if it did mean going about in only a towel in the frigid winter morning air.

"As much as I know you love going about half-naked dripping with water, I recommend you get dressed before you catch something," Marluxia remarked half-sarcastically, catching Demyx by surprise as he appeared just behind him, a tow of his patterned pyjamas and Demyx's own clothing in his arms as he headed for the washing machine. "We've got a day ahead."

_**End of prologue  


* * *

**_

_**A/N: How'd you like it? -is embarrassed-  
To clarify things, this is set in the tropics, on an island city- which basically means that what they mean by 'winter' is basically 'balefuls of rain every other day' and what's not every other day is a balmy, humid, warm day anyway. Such is AZN tropical weathers!  
Thank you so much for reading, leave a review if you liked it enough. -smiley face-**_


	2. Chapter 2

**_A/N: Thank you, those of you who were so awesome as to leave me a review ^___^ I really appreciate every single one you leave, and I'm so happy that you've even read this far. Please enjoy chapter one!  
_**

* * *

_**Chapter One**_

Despite Marluxia's urging Demyx to get prepared early _("Demyx, ten minutes!" "I know, just let me get my hair done.."), _they still left ten minutes late and missed the bus once, standing beneath the bus stop shelter amidst heavy, pouring rain as they awaited the next bus to pass by. Demyx _did_ own a unpractical, large and lovely dark blue motorcycle, but after his cousin Cloud had bashed it up in some nutty street fight with some Kad, Lozer and Yahoo dudes, it was currently sitting in Cloud's repair shop and _very_ slowly getting repaired. It was probably another few weeks until the baby could even work anymore.

Marluxia finally hailed a taxi at ten-fifty, one arm wetter than the other from sticking out from the shelter. For once, his fair face actually seemed tired when framed by the thick grey hoodie he wore. Twenty-three and taken and employed, and with developing eyebags beneath his eyes; the very sight of his better-off roommate made Demyx wonder what _he_ must look like in the eyes of an onlooker. It was another desperate few minutes of blowing through the onslaught of rain and making forced conversation with the chatty taxi driver until the faint outline of the theatre was even in sight.

They finally skidded into the theatre at what was apparently an 'obscenely late' time, running in with newspapers over their heads and decidedly quite damp by the time they entered the strangely quiet theatre. As he opened the door, Marluxia glanced at Demyx and grumbled, "Play nice."

Demyx ignored him, rushing in out of the rain with a child's curiousity to see what his workplace looked like.

The theatre was decidedly modest, but well-sized enough for any production. It was shaped in a semicircle of escalating seats, and at the very bottom there was a medium-sized stage. People in colourful shirts walked about the stage lazily, and more still people stood on the stage itself, preparing what looked to be a rather lush scene. Heads only began to turn when Marluxia entered himself, pulling back his hood and sighing loudly with relief at finally just _getting there._

"Marluxia!" a tall, light-blue-haired man called from the stage area, rushing up the stairs and arriving to the playwright with healthy speed, eyeing him with severe-looking yellow eyes. "You're late. The production's clueless without you or Zexion to direct them, you know that-"

Marluxia cut him off with an open palm in the air, and a sigh that had suddenly turned into a groan. Demyx glanced between the two of them. "Uh.. you're director, too?" he asked sheepishly, eyeing his roommate.

There was an awkward pause in which everyone looked at everyone else with assessment, before Marluxia corrected, "Not _exactly,_ the director's a bit.. lazy.."

"Who's this?" interrupted the blue-haired man suddenly.

Demyx looking at him, decided to himself that he was just a bit _scared_ of this guy. Beneath that long trenchcoat he even wore inside and the beige turtleneck beneath it, it was obvious that he was well-built, and the cross-like scar reaching from his cheeks over the bridge of his nose until his forehead seemed to only give further evidence that this man wasn't exactly to be messed with.

Marluxia, ignoring how his roommate was freezing up with wariness, smoothly introduced, "Saϊx, this is Demyx. He's my roommate, and a fantastic musician if I knew one. Seeing how we're lacking one in the production, I thought it would be a good idea to bring him in."

Saϊx gave Demyx and appraising look, glaring at him up and down as if he had some sort of grudge against AC/DC shirts and worn sneakers, or maybe it was the blond-brunette mullet he didn't approve of. Or maybe it was Demyx's existence on the face of the earth- it was actually quite hard to tell by now. "A musician?"

Demyx cast him a freezing smile. Suddenly he was reminded that the snapping threads of his haphazard career seemed to rest on the very success of getting along with creepy potential co-workers.

"That's what I said," Marluxia muttered, unzipping his dampened hoodie to reveal the white shirt beneath it, and patting the worn messenger bag by his side. "I've got some more pages of drafted script here, so stop bothering with practicing the stage setup and let's just get directly to the intro scene." Here Saϊx looked like he wanted to say something, but Marluxia interrupted him with a striking glare, "I _know_ the proceeding scene needs help, Saϊx, but let's just do the _opening,_ give _Demyx_ a feeling for the play."

Saϊx shut up, and Demyx came to have a slight sense of appreciation for this imperious mode he didn't know existed in Marluxia. Marluxia, in turn, grabbed a whistle that had been hanging off a nearby makeshift hook and blew it louder than Demyx thought possible, causing the shrill screech to resound throughout the huge space of the theatre. "Round up!" the pink-haired man called out gruffly as the numerous heads turned. Saϊx just shrugged subtly to himself and took a seat at one of the auditorium rows, watching as the handful of the cast and crew came and took nearby seats.

It turns out that a lot of the overall cast was also doubling as the crew, and at the moment it was impossible to tell who was what. The entire ensemble was more or less a medium-sized group, consisting of some twenty or so people that Demyx had a feeling he'd get to know fairly soon. He and Marluxia stood at the top of the steps, overseeing as various people dropped whatever they were doing to gather. As they accumulated, Marluxia smiled fondly and turned to him, explaining:

"This play is actually the first try for a lot of the people here, but it's been our dream since college. We're all kind of passionate about it, even though ninety-five percent of us are amateurs, so.. we do things differently," he looked over at the still-gathering crowd, "and a lot of the actors have written their own dialogue for their characters. Which gives diversity and personality to the actual characters, but it gets messy sometimes," he chuckled.

"But you've got some experienced professionals here and there, right?" Demyx enquired, looking at Marluxia in surprise. Sure, he'd lived with the playwright for the last five-something years, but Marluxia had never really confided him about the workings of the play he'd been occupied with. More or less, the pink-haired man had kept to himself, seeming to lose his inspiration if he ever told anyone what he was working on and shutting himself in his room for hours at a time. That would be until he would emerge, tired and frustrated and pretty much resigned.

Curious, Demyx cast a scanning eye over the cast and crew, fruitlessly trying to see who may be an experienced actor or crew member and who wasn't. Frankly, it was hard to tell.

Marluxia laughed harshly. "Yes. The lead actor and," he gestured to Saϊx, who was talking detachedly to a redhead, "the lead actor's manager. And the director, who's almost never around. Xemnas is basically only director in name," he muttered as he shoved his hands in his torn jeans pockets, seeming to mark the end of the conversation as he turned to gaze over his cast and crew.

Demyx swallowed what he said with distant nods, vaguely wondering how a huge bunch of amateurs, a group of tightly-knit friends, could compile a play they loved and then fork over the _lead role_ to a pro outside of their circle of friends.

"Alright, all of you," Marluxia said, speaking up louder and more commanding than Demyx knew possible,

"This is Demyx, my best friend since college and a damn good musician. If it's okay with all you guys, I'm recruiting him for lead musician. I know we're pretty much half-way through production, and we've got a few numbers already, but I was thinking it'd be great if we could have a good eye to look it over and make some new character songs, okay?" At this point he drew his hands out of his pocket and crossed them. "If anyone objects to this statement, raise your hand. You can all introduce yourselves as we go along. If there're no questions, we can move on to practice the first act."

One lanky, fair hand raised in the air- the hand of the redhead who'd been talking to Saϊx, and was currently straddling a theatre chair with one hand draped over it. "Question, teacher," he said, tone crossing dangerously between derisive and good-natured as he peered up at Marluxia with striking emerald eyes, "I've been in charge of music the whole way lately, but does the inclusion of the Demyx guy mean I'm resigning?"

Marluxia's eyes narrowed. Demyx gathered from that that these two weren't exactly on good terms. "I suppose it does, Axel," he said bluntly.

The redhead, apparently called Axel, snorted, but backed down. As soon as his long hand dropped out of the air that Marluxia had been glaring concentratedly at, Saϊx's came up.

"We can't begin the play, because the lead actor's not here."

"And where _would_ he be?"

Demyx blinked, startled. He'd seen Marluxia in many a foul mood before, but here the pink-haired man seemed to be bordering on plain, outright _pissed off._ He eyed his roommate with surprise.

Saϊx just looked on with half-lidded, unperturbed bravery, apparently not bothered by the practical steam rising from Marluxia's ears. "He's sleeping in the backroom."

Marluxia nodded stiffly at this, shoulders relaxing but hands tightening. At first he was silent, seemingly injecting the air with a suspense that could only precede a long, angry lecture, but instead he commanded, "Axel, fetch him, and show Demyx around backstage. The rest of you, once-over your scripts and get ready for the opening scene, alright?" The cast and crew relaxed visibly and shuffled off, and Marluxia sighed into his hand, before pulling it off and smiling wearily at Demyx.

Axel rose from his seat, grinning widely. Demyx just nodded and stared, a little overwhelmed and slightly scared that Marluxia had just left him with the guy he'd just replaced, but Axel's smile _might_ have been good-natured.. it was hard to tell. "Demyx, right? The name's Flynn- Axel Flynn. Got it-"

Marluxia suddenly swept in, smacking Axel upside the head in a strong, quick motion. "If I have to put up with you saying 'Got it memorised' one more time, I _will_ bleach your hair in your sleep," he grumbled, before disappearing into a confused throng of cast and crew.

"Bitch.." the redhead groaned, rubbing the injured spot on his chin, before grinning fiercely at Demyx, continuing, "I've actually heard about you from _Marluxia_. Come on, let's go wake our Sleeping Beauty," he said, jabbing a finger in the direction of the stage and the backstage doors on each side of it. As he did so, a rainbow of myriad coloured bracelets and wristbands bounced around on his skinny wrists. Suddenly, he stopped, giving Demyx a much friendlier appraising look than the one he'd gotten from Saϊx. "Hey, you're a musician, but what instrument do you play?"

The blond swallowed. Ah, the fated question. He had not packed his sitar case that day, seeing how it was both a rainy day and since it was just his first day on the job, he was just getting acquianted with everything. He hesitated, reluctant. Many peoples' opinions seemed to change as soon they learned of the unique instrument that Demyx boasted a one-of-a-kind mastery in. "Uh.. I play the sitar. I- I mean I can play the guitar, great, but.. I like my sitar," he flushed.

The redhead hardly stirred. "Cool, sitar! That's awesome, dude. Guess we'll be getting a unique sound for our production, then. I just play the lame ol' guitar. There's the other guys on the music team: Kairi on the keyboard, Riku on the violin and Sora on the trombone. Though, you don't see most of either Sora or Riku running around most of the time," he grinned sheepishly, "Sora's Roxas's brother, still in college... and Riku spends a lot of time on his job. I'll intro you to Kairi later, though."

Demyx swallowed nervously, but nodded again. "Uh, Marly's always busy with the play, but I never heard much about it from him," he murmured as he struggled to follow behind Axel's confident strides, like he was explaining himself for some sort of crime. "Could you, like, help me out and..?"

"Sure," Axel bounced from one step down to the next with so much self-assuredness that Demyx was blatantly conscious of how he was stumbling slowly and taking in everything. "Well, the play's called _'Final Limit'. _It's a sorta fantasy-adventure thing," he explained as his white sneakers tramped down the stairs with muffled, rhythmatic _thump-thump_s. "Pretty suitable for the whole group of us," he grinned. "But the board of producers is kind of tentative, looking at the premise. We gotta make it some _awesome_ stuff if they're ever going to let us have an opening night, you know what I mean?"

The blond nodded, relieved when they finally reached the bottom of the steps, following as Axel's long strides led them to the door to the backstage.

The door to the backstage area turned out to lead immediately into a rather claustrophobic-looking tunnel, lined with plain concrete, mostly unlit and with a few doors down each side. Carpetted floor suddenly cut off, turned into smooth slate tiling, and Demyx had the sudden feeling that he was in some sort of mafia lord's warehouse. A few vaguely familiar faces passed them by, greeting Axel and calling to Demyx with approval and names like 'New Guy'. They walked down the hallway with alarming speed, passing right by a large door that could only lead to the immediate backstage, before slowly ambling into darker, deeper and even narrower depths of the backstage.

Demyx was seized with a sense of relief when they _finally_ reached a door, which was strangely labelled _'Janitor'._ The blond raised an eyebrow. Just what kind of lead actor would hang out in a dank janitor's closet? Axel laughed, noticing the questioning look Demyx gave the door, and said, "He just puts that up there to ward off people. For your information, Sleeping Beauty's got enough sleep disorders to make a doctor have an orgasm."

Demyx didn't appreciate the metaphor, choosing to laugh nervously before pressing the door open.

The 'Janitor's closet' turned out to be larger than Demyx had initially expected. The already barely-existent light in the hallway turned into pure, pitch-black darkness inside the room, but from the meagre amounts of light that shone in Demyx could see that it was a medium-sized room that was cleaner than one would expect. Shyly he snuck into the room, seized by the strange and abrupt scent of old paper and drying ink. He blinked when Axel switched on the lights, eyes adjusting strainedly to the sudden onslaught of blinding fluorescent light.

To his right there was an obscenely large rack of foreign-looking costumes, and a dresser next to it loaded with makeup that Demyx had once thought was for girls. But directly across him by the walls were a myriad of bookshelves that were unmistakeably old, distinguished and wisdom-packed. In the dead centre of the room was a desk practically painted with the uncountable leafs of paper spread across it, and further uncountable passages of handwritten paragraphs covering the unoccupied inches of said paper. Behind the desk was what could have been a sofa seat, but was completely obscured by a mountain of huge, soft-looking pillows, blankets, and the vague shape of a human beneath them all.

Demyx was, simply said, surprised. "That, uh," he stammered, elbowing Axel and pointing to the indistinct outline of a person beneath the paraphernalia, "_that's_ the lead actor?"

The redhead chose to ignore him, instead sauntering over to the mess and throwing off a wave of soft material. Demyx stared as they soared into the air before crashing into the rack of clothes and draped themselves over said rack. "Wake up, Sleeping Beauty," Axel grunted as he laboriously threw off another heap.

A very muffled groan emerged from the heap, and an unmistakeably human arm pulled out of it, digging away the many-coloured fabrics.

Demyx suppressed a gasp- so there really was something breathing beneath all that.

Finally, a greyish-blue head of hair emerged from obscurity, bringing with it a small, skinny little body.

"Saϊx, unless you want to be- oh, Axel," the young man spoke, voice blurred on the edges from a very evident lack of sleep. "Saϊx has been burying me in blankets since I fell asleep, again, I see," he remarked with contempt as he dug out of the tangle of sheets and stood, smoothing out his jeans and shirt. He could not have been more than twenty-five years old, really, and looked less healthy than he probably should have been.

"Rehearsal's beginning, and you're sleeping at eleven-thirty in the morning," Axel explained lackadaisically, as if the lead actor catching snitches of sleep in the middle of the day was a regular occurrence. Demyx honestly had no idea by now. If this tired-looking young man was the lead actor and the only professional actor in the whole production, then Demyx would understand why Marluxia thought the whole production was in jeopardy.

The pale lead actor just nodded, apparently not caring much. Suddenly he caught notice of Demyx, and turned on his bare heels (he was barefoot) and looked him up and down in rapid succession. "You're new," he stated simply, navy-blue eyes peering at Demyx shamelessly, if not contemptuously. His pale fingers rose to cover the lower half of his face- was he _sniffing?_ "I doubt that we've made acquaintance."

Demyx caught himself staring in surprise, barely registering to the onslaught of thoughts rushing through his head. Alright- thought one quite easily acknowledged that this guy seemed to be a little more than a jerk. Thought two told him that those were the prettiest pair of eyes he'd ever seen, and Demyx had seen a lot of pretty pairs of eyes in his life. Thought three was basically summarised as _Damn, who is this guy?_, thought in a tone that was confusedly crossed between awe, dislike and surprise.

"Uh- yeah- you haven't," Axel grinned, gesturing to the blond, "that's Demyx, Marluxia's buddy and the new guy in head of music. I don't care much that he's taken my place, by the way, seeing how this play's going to hell in a handbasket anyway," he added, giving Demyx a snarky wink. "Demyx, meet Zexion."

Zexion.

That name sounded familiar.

Demyx ignored the sudden thought, tripping over himself as he slapped on a grin and exclaimed, "H-hey, great to meet you!" This was his career at stake, he remembered.

Saϊx's voice suddenly called from beyond the door. "Zexion, are you awake? Rehearsal is starting."

He was still registering to the quick snap of "Yes," that Zexion quipped off unenthusiastically when the actor walked right past him like he didn't exist, disappearing behind the door a bit too suddenly. The slate-blue haired young man was gone before Demyx could even blink or gather his thoughts, and he found himself just standing there with an offered, unshaken hand in front of himself.

Axel frowned. "Zexy tends to do that. Don't mind that, he's a snob anyway. Pretty much looks down on every other actor in the production, since we're all _amateurs _anyway," he grumbled. As he spoke, the sudden clinging of music echoed off, coming from what must have been the stage. "Come on, they're starting rehearsal already. You're the new guy, so you can just watch for today, but you should get us some tunes written after today," he said, wiping the frown off his face in favour for a smirk that Demyx was already getting used to.

The blond nodded, biting his lip. The encounter with Zexion had left something of a bad taste in his mouth. He'd had an awful history of a career, going from musical studio to musical studio in hopes that they would at least listen to his music, and it had been exactly the high-nosed, lackadaisical and dispassionate 'professionals' like the lead actor that had been the ones to turn down Demyx before they even so much gave him as a second look. The musician felt slightly disappointed; as nice as the original crew had seemed, Marluxia being a great friend and Axel being pretty cool so far, he had no idea what to think now that he'd met the lead actor.

He was started out of his reverie by Axel setting a skinny hand on his shoulder, rubbing against the light blue fabric of his jacket and the black AC/DC shirt beneath it comfortably. Demyx hadn't even realised he was cold in the unheated winter air of the backroom before Axel's strangely warm hand ghosted against his neck, and he started in surprise.

The redhead chuckled, "Dude, snap out of it. I know Zexion's a bit of a jerk at first, but you'll get used to it. Once he starts working, you'll get an idea why he's called a professional." With that, he pulled off his hand and gave Demyx a subtle shove. "Don't get spineless to the guy. Let's go."

Demyx nodded, more than slightly disheartened, but let himself get dragged out of the room by Axel, biting his lip. So this was the crew the Marly worked with almost daily. The musician wondered if he could get used to it himself.

_**end of chapter one**_

_**

* * *

**_

_**A/N: So... Sorry Zexion is so slow to show up, but... they're not going to fall in love at first sight, I'll tell you that much!  
Again, thanks so much for reading. Next update should probably be on the 14th of March... if all goes well.**_


	3. Chapter 3

**_A/N_**_: **So here's chapter two, on time! Thank goodness.**_

_**Again, thanks all for all the reviews and support.  
**_

* * *

_**Chapter Two**_

Demyx basically gaped his way through the first scene rehearsal, watching with plain amazement as they acted it out in casual clothes. Axel, not being an actor in the play, sat in the audience area with him, making an occasional snarky comment or telling him a story behind a certain stunt as the opening cast whipped out a catchy musical number that Marluxia and Axel had written together.

"You're a musician, right?" Axel asked him in the middle of the first scene, hand draped over his seat in an overly careless manner.

Demyx looked away from the play momentarily to look at him. "Yeah, I am, why?"

"Nothing. It's just a sympathy thing, you know," Axel chuckled, swatting at the air like he was swatting away all seriousness in the conversation. "Are you happy with this, then? You're just going to be composing awesome numbers and playing awesome music but all people are going to be looking at will be the actors on stage. You okay with that?"

The blond paused and thought, his full attention on the redhead then. "Well, not really. I always wanted to be a real musician, like, a popular singer whose stuff people get to hear on the radio all over the world, but.. It's not like anybody wants to even listen to the CD I put together."

"I'd listen to it," Axel stated firmly. "Demyx, right? I'm tearing at some connections I've got with the musical production industry right now, and we're like birds of a feather, so hold out there, okay? I'll tell you if I get you a gig."

"Wow.." Demyx murmured, staring at the redhead attentively. "You… wow. Thank you so much. I mean, if you could really do that, I'd-"

Axel chuckled, waving off his hands dismissively. "Musicians help each other out, man."

With that, they looked back to the play.

The fantastic first scene had given way to what looked like a monologue, given by a young blond boy who seemed to be barely out of his teens. Demyx glanced to his side at Axel, and blinked in surprise when he saw that there was a rather affectionate look on the face of the green-eyed man. "That's Roxas," Axel breathed in less than a whisper. If anything he sounded proud. His affectionate look didn't waver even when the blond began stammering out his lines.

The blond paused, staring blankly in the middle of his monologue with his hand on his chest, and his aqua-blue eyes blinked. Nervously he shuffled about in his overly-baggy jeans, coughing off a blush as he pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and continued his lines off it. Marluxia, seated cross-legged in the audience seats much closer to the stage and away from Axel and Demyx, was tapping his crossed arms. Demyx recognised the gesture, and swallowed at the slight impatience it betrayed.

Roxas, it seemed he was named, finished his lines, and a new character entered: Zexion's character.

Demyx drew in a breath, caught by surprise. The short figure, the slimness of his body barely concealed beneath that layer of clothing, it was all Zexion, yet the blond stared agape. Even from where Demyx sat he could tell that there was something off and different air, a different air entirely. So that was an _actor._ The mannerism, the new posture and new gait, it was all different from the five seconds of a person that Demyx had sketched in his mind.

_"It's not like we're ever going to get off this island, anyway-"_ the blue-grey-haired young actor spoke with an arrogant stoop of the shoulders, speaking with his hands and looking directly at Roxas with a friendly expression.

Zexion delivered his lines in a flawless, smooth and completely different tone, too. The way he spoke firmer than the clipped voice he'd used when he'd emerged from the heap of blankets and pillows, and it seemed like that Zexion had vapourised off the face of the earth in favour of this kinder, louder, friendly young man casually speaking to another character.

Axel seemed to notice Demyx's captivated expression, and smirked. That look he'd gotten on his face when only Roxas was on stage was gone now. "I told you he was a professional. Best actor on the set, actually.. He's got a flawless career and a neurotic manager hell-bent on preserving it. Crazy, really.." the redhead gestured off to nothing.

The blond just grinned falsely. So... that was a real actor.

- - - - -

"Looks like your spotlight as the new kid just got stolen," Axel commented playfully, ruffling Roxas's already messy hair as he walked by.

The blond made an indignant noise, marching after him and trying and failing to exact justice upon the redhead's own full, spiky body of blazing red hair. "I don't care all that much," he admitted between breaths and leaps to muss up the redhead's well-gelled hair. Damn, after years of knowing Axel and only a small age difference between them, he'd thought he would at least grow tall enough to reach and snag those locks of hair, but apparently not.

Roxas gave up with a resigned sigh, glaring at his boyfriend and sauntering in another direction.

Filing his hands through his pockets, he searched for the scraps of his script before sighing. His pockets were about as empty as he sometimes thought life itself was. Not that he was _emo _or any other label that he may have been stamped with back in school, but Roxas was a philosopher. _Albeit_ a depressing one. "Axel.. where's my script?" he asked, exasperatedly.

Axel grinned, offering nothing but a wink. "I gave it some good ol' beta reading," he responded cheerfully, waggling his trimmed eyebrows as he did so and proceeding to leap up onto the deserted stage. He stretched in the spotlight, looking on at the cast and crew.

"Do some real work, Axel," Roxas grumbled morosely from below the stage, sitting at the piano chair and running his hand along the dusty keys. Kairi had not been in for rehearsal recently, thus the piano hadn't been touched. Now, Kairi was a sweet girl- completely accepting of all the mad, hot-but-unavailable guys running amok in the play when she was sane, straight and single herself. Roxas sort of missed her.

Axel leapt off the stage and stood behind the blond, massaging Roxas's shoulders. "Not hanging out with the kids these days?"

The blond exhaled in a long, loud breath. "Rather be with you, and the production. We've got a deadline to make."

"And indeed you do," Saϊx intervened suddenly, standing a ways off with his arms crossed, the rings on his fingers gleaming in the stage light offset. "Rehearsal begins in five minutes," before adding nonchalantly after a beat, "..Lovebirds."

Roxas swallowed._ Ignore the last comment_. Saϊx making light of a situation was a very, very ominous thing. His eyes shot open and he stared at Axel urgently. "Axel, my script!" he hissed, looking up to find the redhead staring openly at Saϊx, a look of malevolence clear on his expression. He paused, glancing between the two of them warily.

..Damn. Roxas never understood what sort of warfare had occurred to make those two hate each other so much. They never talked. They looked at each other with the sort of expression typically reserved for looking at the hellish bane of an existence in the universe. And Roxas had heard rumours that once upon a time in some fantastical alternate past, they'd been _best buddies!_ Really, one couldn't tell. The second the blond attempted to imagine those two with their hands slapped over each others shoulders, beer can in their free hands and grins on their faces, the next second the image would fester and morph into a picture of them getting creative with the exact same beer cans and using them to gore each other.

The nature of Axel's relationship with the rest of the people in the play was a strange one indeed. Roxas, Sora, Kairi and Riku had only been recruited into the entire production through Kairi's sister Namine, so when they'd all just signed up a month back, every other member was as good as a mystery to them. And to Roxas, the most particular mystery had been Axel. Some members looked at him with a particular sort of cautiouis animosity, such as Marluxia, Vexen and Saϊx, whilst others were casual and friendly in the redhead's presence. Roxas had come to relate it to the fact that Axel was a lot like a vibrantly glowing flame, attracting some and scaring others away. The man himself, however, treated everyone as equals..

With the frank exception of Saϊx, with him he happily traded glowers every other moment. It made Roxas anxious, to be honest.

Axel looked ready to say something, but his voice got caught in the sound of the backstage door swinging open, making way for Marluxia and Demyx. Roxas had to swallow to restrain a very loud sigh of relief as both Axel and Saϊx's heads craned to look at the source of the noise. _Potential massacre averted,_ the blond thought with relief. And for a moment there he'd been thinking that he was going to be hobbling over disembodied limbs.

- - - - -

It was only on day three that Demyx really got acquianted with most of the staff. He'd spent most of Tuesday writing a flurry of songs for the musical after a burst of inspiration, and the fruits of his effort were finally shining through as he sat with his sitar comfortably set against his frame, strumming out the rawest forms of the songs he'd written for the play before some of the members of the crew on that Wednesday morning. The theatre was a large place and very well-arranged acoustics-wise, yet the sound of heavy rain still murmured through the walls, and Demyx had to play a little harder to hear himself sing.

Namine, one of the girls in the cast, was sitting nearby and softly singing along with a child's uncertainty, clutching the sheet of handwritten lyrics in her hand and glancing up at Demyx every so often. Axel and Saϊx and another man named Luxord were there, but Marluxia had gone out to buy a takeout lunch and most of the rest of the cast and crew was absent. They all had jobs, Demyx supposed, that they had to attend to. He assumed that they would probably come back later that day, in the later afternoon, and perhaps then they could get rehearsal done.

Or maybe, perhaps, rehearsal was always this lackadaisical. As ardent as the entire cast and crew was to get the production through, Marluxia was still struggling to write and Demyx could see the insecurity shining through the acting of the non-professional actors. The play was generally the sort of work that, as much as everybody _wanted_ it to succeed, was flopping slowly towards failure if there was no _deux ex machina_ to be found, and fast.

Still, that did not hinder the happiness he felt as he played the first draft of his songs and listened to the shy, sweet voice of Namine as she sang along.

Demyx finished the song with a soft, long strum across his sitar, smiling appreciatively to Namine and Axel as he gently set down his instrument.

"Sweet," Axel grinned, clapping and shuffling through the hand-written leafs of Demyx's music paper. "I gotta say, I'm impressed you shot out this much music in just a day."

The musician flushed self-consciously, feeling his cheeks glow warmly with both sheepishness and sheer happiness at the praise. Glancing around, he coughed in embarrassment, and looked up at Saϊx. "Where's Zexion, by the way?" he asked the first thing that shot through his mind, but found himself actually curious to know where the actor was. Marluxia had told him earlier that if Saϊx was there, it only meant that Zexion was there was well, and vice versa. It seemed like Saϊx was doing well at playing the heavy role of a neurotic, possessive manager.

"Sleeping in the back room," Saϊx answered, looking up from the novel in his gloved hands with that same uninterested expression that Demyx was unfortunately getting used to. "Why? Is there a song you wrote for his character?"

The blond's lips pursed. Actually, he had yet to write a song for Zexion's character, not exactly being well-acquainted with either the actor nor the character themselves. Namine and Roxas and some others had been easy enough to write for, since they'd talked and made friends recently and Axel had been there to help, but he hadn't even thought about what a number for Zexion's character would sound like.

"I'm not familiar with his character enough," Demyx replied with grudging honestly.

Saϊx just nodded, giving him a slightly contemptuous look before returning to his novel.

Luxord, who'd been standing by the backstage door and apparently shuffling a set of cards, made an attention-grabbing scoffing noise. "Most Wednesday rehearsals are this lazy, Demyx," he explained in a (possibly fake?) unforgettable accent as he flashed Demyx a charming smile. Here he flashed the cards spread out in his crafty grip. "It's not as if we're making all that much progress, after all. Care for a game of blackjack, all of you?"

- - - - -

Marluxia arrived at one in the afternoon, with a plastic bag with styrofoam boxes of take-out vegetarian food at hand, half-wet and with his arm on the shoulder of a lanky dirty-long blond-haired man. Demyx and his circle of friends were seated at the stage with a few cards at hand by then, and all heads craned in surprise as Marluxia took steps down the auditorium stairs, dripping water all the way. "Awful weather," the pink-haired man cursed, before planting a long, affectionate kiss on the lips of the blond-haired man whose hand was around his waist. They looked like a couple out of one of Marluxia's countless published romance novels.

Demyx smiled sheepishly. "Guess that's Vexen," he whispered the Axel next to him, who snickered. When he glanced back off, Marluxia was within earshot, and looking at the two of them with a dispproving expression. Demyx grinned, "What? Wasn't saying anything."

Marluxia frowned briefly, before dismissing with a shrug and turning to the man who was quite obviously Vexen, shifting gears completely and smiling fondly. "Vexen, you have to go check up on the props. I think Roxas broke one the other day," he said, much softer than Demyx was ever used to, especially after days of hearing him bossing around everybody. As he spoke he slid out of the hand around his waist, offering out the styrofoam box of food to Demyx.

Vexen seemed like he wanted to stay, though. As soon as Marluxia had escaped his arm, he raised one (just one, oddly enough) eyebrow at Demyx, peering at him with too-intense green eyes. "And who are _you?"_ Even in the dim lighting of the theatre, the sharp angles of his face were very much apparent, and his eyes seemed to gleam hungrily in the light.

Demyx gulped. It was believable a moment before, but at the moment he was having difficulty that his roommate ever doted on _this guy._ "I-I-" he coughed into his fist uncomfortably, suddenly feeling his throat constrict. When he looked up, his roommate was sighing and maneouvering in front of him protectively.

The pink-haired man had his still-dripping wet arms akimbo. "Vexen, this is my roommate, Demyx. We've been living together for a few years now. I'm sorry I never found the opportunity to introduce you, but we're excellent friends."

Vexen gave them both a decidedly disturbing glance before shrugging, raising his angled nose and disappearing behind the backstage door. Marluxia's gaze followed the man until he disappeared, and afterwards the man heaved a sigh even as he smiled, and turned back to Demyx. "Vexen's like that," he explained, not seeming repentant at all for his boyfriend's impolite behaviour. If anything, he looked even a little proud as he planted both hands on the stage floor and lifted himself up with a grunt, eyes scanning over the deck of cards that Luxord had set out in the centre of their little circle. "What are you playing?"

Demyx grinned, flashing his cards. "Blackjack. Want to join?"

Here, Luxord intruded, "No eating when playing games. Wouldn't want to get the game dirty, would we?" he said, smiling wryly and holding out his palm.

Demyx frowned, glancing between the cards and the food, before handing over his cards reluctantly. "You're such a stickler for your cards," he muttered.

Luxord just smirked and took the cards appreciatively. Axel stifling a snicker a few feet off, and the game went on without the sitarist.

- - - - -

"This part looks contrived," Marluxia said, pencil to his lip as his eyes trailed over the scrap of paper secured on the clipboard on his lap as he sat, long frame slightly scrunched up on a backstage chair. It was late by now, and most of the cast and crew had gone home after another generally illaudable day of rehearsal. Only Marluxia, Demyx, Saϊx and Zexion remained, and most of them were each to their own devices: Saϊx seated nearby, immersed in a book on astrology of all things, and Demyx sitting crosslegged across the room and tinkering with his sitar. Zexion and Marluxia supplied the only real conversation that floated around the room, apparently discussing the script.

Frankly, Demyx had never heard Zexion talk so much off-stage as he was currently. Even as he paced every metre of the room, he flashed thoughtful looks Marluxia's way, occasionally looking elsewhere, and always with his fingers curved around the contours of his face, like he was always sniffing at something. It was fascinating to see Marluxia and him fabricate plot twists from midair, to say the least. Quite often Demyx would look up from the strings of his instrument, and watch the playwright and actor converse ardently about the plotline.

Zexion was especially interesting to watch. When he was so busy thinking about the story, he seemed utterly unaware that the sitar had momentarily stopped or that the musician playing it was gazing at him with interest. Regardless of how cold his personality may have been, it was clearly evident that he had a lot more in him than the average actor.

The actor in question took a sharp turn on his boot heels (Demyx wondered why he even bothered wearing heeled boots when it was so obvious that he was quite short already) and gazed at Marluxia with gleaming dark blue eyes. "You could endeavour at manipulating the dialogue. Perhaps a different character should conduct the opening lines; the loquacious one."

Marluxia looked up from the clipboard, and instead of looking at Zexion, turned to look at the musician sitting cross-legged on the floor. "Demyx, what do you think of this?" he began, pulling the clipboard out from where it had been resting and holding it out in his direction tentatively.

The musician stared up at the playwright in surprise. Once in a blue moon he occasionally turned to Demyx for help on his story, often by asking random questions quite spontaneously, but this was the first time ever that Demyx actually got to look at the script itself and comment on it. He blinked repeatedly, not moving to take the clipboard as if it were something sacred. "I can, seriously?"

The actor across the room rolled his eyes. "Naturally, he's offering it to you.."

Demyx shot him a confused look, but accepted the clipboard anyway, glancing over the frank, elegant stroking lines of Marluxia's pencilled hand over the lined paper. It was the script for the second act, wherein the characters had successfully escaped the island on a raft, and were sailing out in the open sea. Marluxia had written in tiny words that the script was supposed to indicate a buildup of suspense as they begin to worry about where they were heading and what they would do once they got there. All in all, Demyx could recognise the characters for Roxas, Namine and a few others- Zexion included. He looked again in the direction of the actor, and shuddered when he saw that he was looking directly at him with a piercing and analysing stare.

He grinned to hide his nervousness. "G-gimme a sec to read this."

There was a pause, and suddenly the words on the script were reduced to nothing but dark blurs on the orange light of the backstage lights. Demyx bit his lip, blinking and looking up at Marluxia, who had been watching him with a look of expectancy. "Uh.. What am I supposed to think?" he asked haplessly, looking between the playwright in his work. "I mean, it looks okay, but it's not like I really know the characters."

Zexion scoffed across the room, but Marluxia just nodded patiently. "I'm just looking for a spectator's opinion, not for a professional critique. Nothing comes off as too put-on or anything, then?"

Demyx shook his head, before biting his lip and giving the page another once-over. Finally, with a look of resolution he looked up brightly, "You know.. you could have more of an open-ey opening line. I don't get any, you know, build-up when you just start in the middle of an argument like this." He grinned, slightly satisfied with himself that he'd been able to be of any help.

Marluxia smiled and took back the board, reading over the script himself. "Okay. I'll rewrite the opening and see how it turns out."

"No."

They both turned to look at Zexion, who stood with his arms cross firmly across the room. The actor's eyes were narrowed and his full lips were pursed in an evident frown. "No," he continued, "there's no need to fix that. Continue writing from where you left off, Marluxia."

"Why not?" Demyx exclaimed, slightly offended and more wary.

Zexion shot him a contemptuous look. "Your advice blatantly holds no value. There is a poetic value in the opening of the scene that a critique could easily comprehend. It's like treating the audience as children if we work it otherwise."

Marluxia had grown cautiously silent, a figure shuddering into the darkness reduced to peering anxiously at Demyx and Zexion. Even Saϊx, who had been doing a fantastic job of disappearing into the background the whole time, had clapped his book shut and was tentatively glancing between the two of them with a disapproving expression.

Demyx, in turn, blinked, more than insulted. He wasn't a professional playwright and had less experience in theatre than he would have liked, but he still felt defensive at the sharp invectives that the actor had been throwing his way. Certainly, Zexion may have been the professional, experienced actor who had probably co-written quite a few stories and plays in his past, yet there wasn't a need for the actor to be so plainly _mean._ "I don't get it, man," he muttered.

"Of course you don't."

Oh, that was it. That had been enough for Demyx. He didn't care if Zexion was the best actor he'd ever met in his life, or the smartest, or even a damn good co-playwright.

"That's not what I mean!" Demyx exclaimed, voice wavering with emotion he wasn't used to himself. "I mean, why do _you_ have to be such a douche about it? Marly was just asking for the opinion of a non-critic guy and you have to just jump on me about it!"

The actor's eyes were only further narrowed, narrowed to the point of slits sitting like knifes in the darkness of those blue eyes. His arms uncrossed, and his hand moved to sheath over his face once more, covering his mouth effectively and leaving only that single eye to glare, shattering into the thick air between them. "Your opinion," he snarled, "about me, or about the play, holds no value.. whatsoever."

Demyx choked on his own words in the middle of shouting out a sentence. Fluttering his eyes open and close in disbelief, he swallowed back a rock arisen in his throat and stood up, bracing his stance confrontationally, like any physical position could brace him from verbal attacks. "Y-you know, you can be as much of a total jerk as you like, but that's not going to make the p-people like your play any more. I don't _care _if you've got some perfect career history or a heckuva a lotta sleep disorders, it's not like I'm going to _like_ you for that!" Here he paused, sifting through his anger-shaken mind for a proper insult. "..You _bastard_!"

...Oh. There it went. That whooshing, cold shudder that fell over the room must have been the motions of his career brutally careening out the window. There could be no other, better description for the sudden drop in the temperature of the air that suddenly occurred when the actor soaked in the full volume of the retort.

Demyx himself was suddenly seized by the sheer effect of what he'd said. Sure, the head actor _was_ a jerk, but he had just epically pissed off the _lead actor_ of the play that saved his career. He shivered with horror at himself and the magnitude of what had just happened- what was _still_ happening. Zexion happened to be the epitome of _scary_ when he was angry.

The scorn bleeding through his searing words was evident as he levelly pronounced, "I told you. Your opinion.. holds no value. Whatsoever. This production is slowly sauntering towards total failure should no one act on it, and it is sublevel material like you that is causing it to do so. I refuse to let my career be tainted just because of your insufficiency.

...

You are mindless refuse in this play, little more."

Before Demyx had a chance to even fully swallow the calamity he'd just induced, Zexion was out the door, and gone was the frigid air that had accompanied him.

**END OF ACT ONE**


	4. Chapter 4

**_A/N: Ahh! I'm sorry I've been so slow to update this! Getting writing done has been difficult lately. But I won't keep you with the blah blah, please, enjoy the story! xD_**

_**Chapter Three**_

**ACT TWO**

Demyx's hands clenched so tightly around the glass of vodka that it could have quite possibly broken in his hands. "I don't get it," he cried into the struggling sips that he attempted to swallow, face illuminated by the dying light of sunset crawling in from the glass of Marluxia's balcony door. He sat cross-legged on his roommate's sweet-scented bed, mostly sober except for the glass of vodka Marluxia had taken out especially for him, dressed only in his jeans.

"What don't you get?" Marluxia asked leniently from where he sat at his deskchair, turned away from the typewriter where his work (or lack of thereof) sat waiting for him, instead patiently watching as Demyx spilled vodka over his bed. His tired face was illuminated in the vibrant red hues of the sunset, framed by the rectangular glasses that he wore especially when he was typing out the scripts he'd drafted on pencil. However, as done-up as he was for writing this evening, he'd seemed to have shifted over his priorities to comforting his devastated roommate.

"What I don't comprehend is," Demyx began, before blanking out as he mentally searched his mind for the proper words. As occasionally articulate as he could be when he was tipsy, blank-outs happened to him more often than slurs.

"Uh, what I don't get is why plain-out _bastards _like Zexion get the awesome flawless careers and get rich, and they're still such bastards even though they've probably got enough money to be happy enough for a long time, while we- we're the nice guys- we hafta suffer poverty," here he objectively pointed to the cracks in the wall by Marluxia's well-taken-care-of plants, and the playwright's eyes followed disapprovingly, "and we're super talented too, right? We got everything they got except the crappy personalities."

Demyx took a long swig of the vodka, before setting it down and staring deeply into Marluxia's eyes. "Since when did crappy personalities become a necessity in the resume, Marls?" he cried, voice slowly sifting over from angry to plainly despairing. "It all just goes right back to that time when I- oh yeah, you know, I can still remember that day." Thoughtfully, he set down the empty glass and attempted to balance it on the softness of the bedsheets, ultimately failing. Marluxia caught the motion, quite obviously, pursing his lips but not saying anything. "That was a week after I started running around trying to get music studios to accept my CD. Some bastard just came in and _snapped _it in two, right? Did I ever tell you about that? He was a jerk too. And he got his stuff sold."

"I remember that," Marluxia murmured, shifting his weight in the chair, finding a more comfortable niche in the many worn quilts he'd layered onto the chair for comfort. "You were quite devastated."

By now his eyes were glossy with emotion. "Heck yeah I was! B-but now, it's only just registering, maybe the whole truth of this is that: the jerks get the parts. Is that it?"

"If I don't say myself, I'd say my novels are quite popular?"

Demyx grinned. "Uh- oh yeah, your novels are awesome, by the way! But they're all under pen names, so it doesn't count."

Marluxia's shoulders sagged, before he shrugged and swirled the chair around, peering at the blank sheets that probably should have been a few pages of script, but were instead blank slates staring tauntinfly back at him. "I don't think it's a matter of personality, Dem. More like a matter of luck," he said defeatedly as he tentatively keyed in a few echoeing words onto the paper. "Luck seems to be the only determination of what's fair and what's not."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Here, Marluxia _clacked clacked_ in a few further strokes of keys, staring at the keyboard in remote surprise before venturing a few words further. Glancing at Demyx, he continued, "Besides, by the way, Zexion's a bit of an exception. To be honest, you don't really know his story," he said, before looking back at the projected facet of hard keys on the typewriter.

Demyx's eyebrows knitted, and he picked up his glass of vodka again, peering down the glass and finding that not even a drop was left. Disappointedly he set the glass back down on its side on the bed. "How's he an exception to _anything?"_

"Well, for one, he really does care for this play. He's been pretty much co-writing for it this whole time. He's used to being in much more professional productions, but he's mostly patient with us and he's really trying to steer the play in the direction of success," Marluxia explained. "So even if he can't exactly boast the best personality, he really does care for his work. Doesn't that make you feel a bit better?"

"He's _still_ a jerk, and I don't see how that should qualify him for being a hotshot actor."

Marluxia cast him a frustrated look. "Just make up with him, will you, Demyx? Your spat's just the sort of thing you have to put up with in the perpetual stream of crap that any career's bound to throw your way." Here, his hands were in a perpetual, unpredictable blur of movement scooting over the expanse of the typewriter as he pulled in another page.

Mollified, the musician picked up his sitar and swallowed, plucking at a few strings. Suddenly he felt self-conscious, even though the only other person in the room was Marluxia. "I just.. I don't know. It's not fair that I have to put up with him pushing me down like that, right? You were there," he murmured.

Suddenly Marluxia's hands decelerated, finishing what seemed to be a word with wistful long clicks at the keyboard before he stopped altogether. "Demyx," he sighed, swerving around his chair and gazing at him resignedly. The sun had set quite far by now, and Marluxia's soft expression was barely visible in the dim bluish light. Defeatedly, the pink-haired man outstretched his arms and grumbled, "Come here."

Wordlessly the musician set aside his sitar and crumbled into an awkward embrace with him.

It was a thing that they did every so often, and sadly more often as of late. Marluxia more often than not initiated it, pulling Demyx into a haphazard hug that they remained in, and then pulled off and forgot about. They didn't talk about it but neither of them denied that they pretty much needed it to remain sane, especially with electric bills piling up on the dining table and failed job attempts staining Demyx's whining, diminished phoetus of a career history.

"You have to try and make up with Zexion later, okay? Or I can talk to him for you. Your choice."

"Yeah.. yeah, okay. Don't want to talk about it," the musician murmured into the warmth of his roommate, breathing in the light flower-like scent that marked Marluxia, "I really don't get how you deal with all this."

Marluxia chuckled, his chest quaking with the movements as he patted Demyx's back reassuringly. His glasses fell askew when attacked with his roommate's head of fully-gelled blond hair, but he just smiled fondly. "I have an ineffectual roommate like you, and the whole production depending on me. Plus, I have a beautiful boyfriend like Vexen to argue with over props."

Here Demyx laughed lightly, tipsily slipping out of the hug and making for the kitchen. "For the record, your boyfriend creeps me out."

The playwright just ignored this remark, snickering a little as he turned back to his typewriter and continued typing away. He hesitated to tell Demyx that in their entire conversation, he had typed out a full page of script, and was entirely on the way of creating another.

Over in the kitchen, the blond musician threw his hands up to the heavens and groaned loudly. "You know, this still hasn't fixed the crazy mess that I'm sure my job over at the play is after picking a fight with the _lead actor.."_

- - - - -

"I honestly suppose that this is the best you can do?" Marluxia sneered, gripping the silvery surface tightly in his knitted-gloved-covered hands as he brandished the scythe-shaped object quite threateningly. As he did so, a biting, nonexistent western-movie _whoosh_ breezed through the theatre.

Vexen returned the overconfident grin with a toothy one, holding his own weapon: a light pink spray-paint can uncapped and ready for action. Despite the flowery bandana Marluxia had given him tying back his hair and the worn, frayed apron spattered with paint he had tied back over his typical lab-coat attire, he managed to actually look rather threatening. "It is the _prototype_ version of the _exponentially better_ prop that I am certain to produce once this coat of painting is finished."

The playwright testily swung the prop in his hands like a baton, gracefully spinning it in elegant arcs that left blurs of colour in the air. "And is the core strong enough?"

The props director scoffed. "You couldn't expect less."

Demyx watched the couple from the stage with obviously piqued interest, before leaning over to Luxord who sat by his side, whispering, "Do they do this often?'

The blond-haired man, amidst a decidedly boring-looking game of solitaire, smirked. "Often enough to keep us quite amused."

The musician sighed, shifting back to plucking at the ghost of a melody on his sitar, casting a forlorn glance at the checkered canvas shoe hanging off the doorknob of the actual janitor's closet a ways away, shuddering every time the door jerked a little or made a bumping noise. The shoe quite undeniably belonged to Roxas, and a certain redhead had long disappeared from thin air in the middle of rehearsal since that checkered shoe had propped itself on the doorknob. "Just.. how many couples are in this production, anyway?"

Luxord chuckled. "As many couples as there were the right hands dealt them."

It was yet another gloomy, rainy day, with even less of a turn-up than the day before. Not even Zexion and Saϊx were there this time, something which Demyx was actually quite thankful for. Word had not spread to anyone else about the intense spat that had happened between the actor and musician, apparently. Well, Demyx wanted to keep it that way. He didn't want the shadow of the event to fester into gossip, or worse yet, a boot out of the team.

He wasn't exactly in the mood to reason with a certain ice queen anyway.

The sitarist paused in the middle of a tune. Like Luxord would say, Zexion certainly had a few tough cards dealt his way, but still... the guy was _mean._ He was a fantastic actor, and admittedly quite attractive, but the personality threw off everything. But what did personality matter when the young man could act like he had in a simple rehearsal? Demyx found himself disappointed, forlorn and outright depressed thinking about it. Anxiously he resumed plucking at the strings of his favourite, slightly aged instrument.

Whatever actual turn-up had showed up for the rehearsal was currently either being excessively romantic in the janitor's closet, arguing over props, plucking aimlessly at a sitar or playing solitaire. Though, Luxord had been sociable to offer to play poker with him.

This play production.. sucked.

Demyx sighed, watching with half amusement and half resignment as Marluxia and Vexen had at it over... well, _props._ It was unfortunately blatant, despite the cocky competitiveness that gleamed between the two of them, that they were an incredibly happy couple. The musician rested his chin in his hand as he watched him, thoughtfully pondering on what kind of material could have made those two the happy couple that they were. Marluxia had had his fair share of ex-boyfriends and even girlfriends in thrifty relationships, well enough to make some men wince, but he seemed earnestly secure in this one, causing Demyx to wonder.

...Well, said man was currently swinging around a scythe prop like a moron and exchanging playful theatre-related jeers with his paint-spattered boyfriend, but that part didn't matter.

Demyx was nudged out of his reverie by Luxord and an unusually sharp edge of a card. "Is your head in the game?" the blond man smirked, the stubble of his unshaven face showing in the bare light of the stage. "You stopped playing about five minutes ago."

The musician shook his head confusedly. "Uh."

"There's an unpleasant bug going around, I hear. Hopefully you've not caught it?"

"...Uh. I.. guess," Demyx murmured, feeling his mind suddenly blank out as he idly trailed a hand over the strings.

- - - - -

It was a Friday morning, at a time ghosting just between the post-arrival sleepiness and the pre-lunch hunger, when Demyx sat strumming vigorously at the strings of his ornate sitar, listening happily as Namine and Roxas dueted harmoniously. They were sitting with their legs hanging off the edge of the empty stage in a row, with Axel seated in the audience chairs, arms crossed and a satisfied look in his eyes.

Demyx tore through the heavy tempo of the song with practiced ease, anxiously risking a glance up at either Namine or Roxas every so often. It truly had taken practice and they still had the unfamiliar awkwardness of any first-timer, but they were really singing and capable of keeping to the song. That in itself was a lot of reassurance, because if there was one more problem they didn't need, it was stumbling, singing, barely-adult actors tripping over themselves.

He finished the tune, and gave the two a satisfied smile. "You guys are doing great!" Demyx exclaimed, gingerly setting aside his sitar. He faked a huge grin, mostly putting it on as soon as he caught the minute glimpse of Zexion in his peripheral vision. The actor had just emerged from the front door with Saϊx. Demyx warily looked everywhere but where he was, biting his lip and looking objectively at Roxas.. who was peering at him with large, curious blue eyes. Namine, sitting farther away, mirrored the action.

"What's up?"

Demyx chewed on a painful raw line of flesh across his lips, hesitating. Namine, Axel and Roxas were trustworthy enough, he supposed, but he honestly simply did not want to talk about it.

The whole issue left more than a bad taste in his mouth- the issue, in his mind, summarised the whole load of pain he'd put up with since he'd graduated. Zexion was every high and mighty music professional who'd discarded his CD before even listening to it, and their argument was every single exchange of words that had ever passed between Demyx and those myriad consultants. Those cutting remarks Zexion had made were all the telephone conversations Demyx had once had with his family, only in a sharper language and from a less-caring mouth.

He jerked in surprise when a pair of hands slapped onto each of his shoulders, and a plastic bag swung into his view. More vegetarian takeout. "Eat it all," Marluxia grunted, voice muffled beneath the cage of his fingers gripping over his mouth, "if I see a modicum of food right now, I'll empty my guts into the nearest receptacle."

Puzzled, Demyx craned his head to look up at the playwright standing behind him. Marluxia's eye twitched, his leg making a strange, jerky movement, and it looked like he was going to make a run for the bathroom either way. "Just _take it,_" the man asserted, dropping the bag into Demyx's lap unceremoniously before turning on his heel and all but running away.

The blond he left behind had about two seconds to look between the warm plastic bag of nicely-packed vegetarian take-out, the actors on each of his sides, and the empty backstage doorway fluttering open and close before he cried, "Marluxia!" and stumbled to his feet, running after the playwright. As he fell into an awkward jog (he honestly didn't exercise enough, and the slight wheeze that caught his breath was enough proof) he barely caught the backstage door in mid-close and raced in through it.

He almost missed the fleeting figure of his flatmate before Marluxia completely disappeared into the backstage bathroom. Vexen, in all strange occurrences, was already inside, and peering with an unreadable expression as Marluxia heaved over the sink. Demyx slid clumsily out of a run as he staggered into the bathroom, biting his lip and turning away at the sight, inching towards the wall. He was concerned, sure, but it was sights like these that made his own stomach feel like it was dropping out and bouncing back up his eosophogus.

There was a thankful five seconds of relative silence as Marluxia just stood there, bent over the sink and almost completely supported by his arms, and then he continued. Demyx, casting a hasty apologetic look Vexen's way, skidded out of the bathroom and shut the door behind himself, bumping into something slightly and screwing his eyes closed. For a second, he just stood, cursing his own weak stomach.

When he looked up, he yelped.

Standing uncomfortably close to him was Zexion, whose hand was drawing strangely close to his face. Demyx's breath hitched and his own hand shot to his mouth, spontaneously swatting away the actor's. "I- uh-" he swallowed back the rising bile in the back of his throat, now feeling a _genuinely_ bad taste in his mouth. He made a mostly useless attempt to make distance between himself and Zexion, mostly useless since the endeavour ended up with his back hitting the bathroom door. The uncomfortably thin bathroom door, it may be noted- Demyx winced at the sound of Marluxia hacking his breakfast into the bathroom sink, blocking out the sound of Vexen saying- _something._

And strangely enough, Zexion looked _concerned. _His dark eyes stood out like sapphire gems in the darkness of the backstage hallways, watching Demyx with an intent look. "Swallow," he said, holding a paper cup to Demyx's face. He seemed to have pulled the paper cup out of nowhere, or maybe he'd had it all along; he was too dizzy to try and figure it out now.

Still, this was the actor whom he had earnestly _pissed off_ only the other day, and no nauseoua could cloud out that fact. Demyx shot the paper cup of water a suspicious look, like the pale fingers slid around it in a comfortable grasp were bleeding venom into the water it held.

The actor, seeming to catch on, said flatly, "It's not laced with poison, if that's your concern. It's mine."

Ultimately Demyx took the cup, sipping at it tentatively and trying to look everywhere other than at the shorter young man. There was little else to look at, though, especially in the spatially-challenged and questionably sanitary backstage hallways and their confusing layout. He noted with thankfulness that Marluxia had apparently stopped throwing up. He was mumbling something to Vexen, too weakly and too muffled to be heard through even the paper-thin door.

"There's been a wave of illness going about. I suppose Marluxia's spent enough time out in the rain to have rendered himself particularly suspectible to it," Zexion stated with a puzzlingly subdued tone. "It's worrisome, either way."

Demyx rolled his eyes and snorted, clarity returning to himself as the pangs of dizziness faded away with startling abruptness. "Yeah, I know. You're worried about the progression of the production, if it'll make the deadline," he grumbled, instantly regretting the sharpness of the tone he'd adopted.

Whatever rebuttal Zexion would have made in his own defence was cut off by the swinging open of the bathroom door and Demyx's subsequent stumbling away from it. The musician made a strange, swerving sort of motion as he turned and watched as Vexen and Marluxia trailed out of the bathroom, the latter holding a paper napkin to his mouth and looking notably dishevelled.

"Demyx," Marluxia began, voice strangely raw, "I'm going back to the apartment early with Vexen, all right? Would you mind taking up rehearsal from here?" he near-pleaded.

Demyx found himself stupidly at a loss for words, and just nodded, watching as the two men ambled away and disappeared. Then, he gave Zexion a considering look, which the actor returned with a frighteningly unreadable expression, and proceeded to say awkwardly, "Uh.. damn, I guess I'm in charge?"

Zexion's eyes narrowed and suddenly that strange, subdued and weirdly concerned young man disappeared. Head Bitch Actor Zexion seemed to kick right back into full gear with a visible change of expression, and he snapped, "Not while I'm still breathing." Here, he proceeded the make a turn on his heel and sped away towards the stage area.

- - - - -

Demyx learned, that day, that Zexion was pretty much ridiculously competent at everything that wasn't social interaction. Namely, Zexion was absurdly good at slave-driving.

Who would have known?

- - - - -

_"Shit,"_ Axel cursed with dramatic volume as he stared at his open hands and the raw, reddened fingers in front of them. They were twitching slightly, and in the light they looked like they may have even adapted different, well, _angles._ For effect, he repeated, "_Shiiit!", _loudly and quite expressively.

Demyx chewed on an overused roll of gum in his mouth quite dejectedly, stroking his sitar almost apologetically. Over at the keyboard, Kairi was reduced to a crumbled heap, falling with her head over the keys and her arms hanging off the edges uselessly. Axel, guitar still strapped on, had taken to loudly cursing just about anything that popped into his head- deeper, darker curse words, Spanish, German, what have you. On the stage, all the actors had fallen onto various places, not resorting to express any vocal complaint as their throats had been scraped raw by hours of endless singing and line-reciting for a while now.

The entire theatre was still and silent, with the morbid exception of an occasional whimper. If there were an opportune gust of wind to swoop over the entire place, it would have had an uncanny resemblance to a battlefield hours after the end of a devastating Pyrrhic victory. Because technically, the cast and crew had won, at the cost of their personal health.

If Zexion and Saϊx rendered them all completely vocally and musically disabled for the rest of their lives, Demyx _would_ sue.

For whatever reason, Axel yelled a much louder "_Shit!"_ after attempting to shake awake a dazed-looking Roxas on stage.

Zexion, reigning Head Bitch Actor apparently graduated to TerminActor of the production (Axel had made the nickname up halfway through Full Rehearsal No. 6) simply stood unaffected in the centre of the carcasses on the stage, with his arms crossed and a ghost of satisfaction in his expression. "Ah. I suppose that's acceptable."

After a beat of disbelief, Demyx cried, "Acceptable?" from the offstage area, feeling slightly small as he yelled at the head actor from a visibly lower surface. "_Acceptable!_ Zexion, _Zexion,_ it's _six in the evening!_ These people," he gestured meaningfully at the motionless figures lying assortedly over the stage, "have families! Dreams! Have you no _shame?_"

As if on cue, Roxas croaked into a relative form of consciousness, making a strange gurgling noise before being nearly drowned in the bottle of water that Axel forced on him. Nearby, Namine rolled onto her face and made a brave attempt at speaking, perhaps making some form of peace. Zexion, however, did not stir one inch from the metaphorical mountain upon which he stood and peered imperiously down at Demyx. "Acceptable, meaning that we are _finally_ on track-"

In the background, Axel was shaking Roxas violently by the shoulders, a dejected bottle of water lying on its side nearby and wetting the stage quite abundantly_. "Roxas! Roxas, man, wake up-"_

"-Meaning that perhaps this production is not a dying endeavour-"

_"-dude, wake up..._ _I... I can't live without you...!-"_

"-and perhaps it may or may not progress into an _actual, acceptable play _that-"

"_-look, I, I'm sorry about that time back in middle school when I stole your lunch, just wake up,-"_

"-may or may not be recieved properly by the critics, even then. Which quite definitely-"

_"-ROXAAAAS!"_

"-displays that all of our careers in the theatre world are quite at risk. But seeing as to how you're all amateurs, that doesn't matter, does it?'

Demyx glowered up at the stage and the actor in the centre of it. "Yeah, thanks, we all appreciate you half-killing us for the sake of our dream."

Zexion glared back, rebutting, "Yes, well, that's what you all don't understand! Theatre isn't a one-time dream, something you pull off once, enjoy and never look back at. It's something you just pull off like a vacation! It's a way of thinking, a philosophy that you live and abide by! ...A discipline!" Momentarily he pursed his lips, scanning over the stage area with a razor-sharp scowl. "If you earnestly wanted to create a production, the perhaps you'd receive this much-needed rehearsing with less complaint."

A ways off, Axel was administering some bastardised rendition of C.P.R., wherein he gave the kiss of life without even trying to exert pressure on Roxas's chest. Roxas was, for the record, breathing quite well.

Zexion exited stage right.

- - - - -

At half-past seven in the evening, Demyx tumbled into his apartment with his sitar case strapped to his back and a very sore set of fingers to find his roommate buried in quilts, thermometers and several questionable apparatuses, generally reclined quite comfortably into his bed and listening with intent as his boyfriend read Shakespeare to him. On the writing desk nearby sat twenty pages of fresh manuscript that Marluxia had apparently written with Vexen's help since he'd gotten back, weighed down by a bowl of what looked like stew. The whole room smelled like vegetable stew and flowers.

Demyx stood stock-still in the hallway, weighing the factors in his mind:

He, as well as ninety percent of the other cast and crew, had been rendered borderline comatose by an insane actor and his just-as-insane-if-not-more manager for the last five hours. Marluxia was sick, but looking twenty times better. Apparently Vexen cooked one _heck_ of a good vegetable stew. There were twenty pages of fresh manuscript on the desk. And judging from the makeshift door hanger poking out of the garbage bin, apparently Marluxia had found his muse.

Marluxia stretched in the bed and sat up, smiling at Demyx good-naturedly. "Hey, you're back. How was practice?"

Demyx opened his mouth to say something, proceeded to say a whole lot of nothing, and then shut it. Then he turned on his heel and walked away, into some zone where he was more worthy of existing in.

That night, curled up in a cold, lonely little ball in his bedroom and forced to listen to the sound of Vexen and Marluxia getting it on over the couch only two doors away, Demyx quite spontaneously decided that he hated life.

_**end of chapter three**_

_**A/N: Ahhh- more bitchy Zexion. Eheh. Guilty pleasure. Please leave a review if you liked this- I feed off that stuff like a barnacle on a boat. Hehe.  
**_


	5. Chapter 5

_**A/N: I present to you chapter four! Wahh.. the holiday's left me a LOT of time to think over this fic and write some more, so I promise there'll be more available sometime. I think.**_

_**Thanks to , PinappleDuck, Nekotsubasa, AccerberRider, Dance of Flame and others who have dropped me reviews! Seriously, I'm sorry I can't address you all personally, but every single review I get is like Christmas all over again. ;D -hyperactive-**_

_**Extra-special thanks for all the constructive crit some of you have offered! As this is my first serious attempt at writing in a long time, I'm always stumbling around a little and any little concrit I can get, I would appreciate greatly.**_

_**It's come to my concern that pointed out that the characters are slightly OOC? Thanks for noting on my characterisation, which I'm not certain about myself, but I'd appreciate it even more if I could understand which specific points of my portrayal are off. Thanks so much for sticking with me as I write this thing, though!**_

_**Chapter Four**_

At six that morning, Demyx woke up to the noise of incessant ringing on the phone. Finally, after what seemed like a blurry eternity, Vexen answered it, speaking a few hushed words in the cool quietness of the world at an early hour of the morning, and suddenly Vexen was in his room, arms akimbo as he held out the phone like it was some sort of dirty device, and spoke contemptuously to Demyx, "It's your sister."

_That_ got his attention. With a sleepy groan, Demyx rolled out of the bed. Still half-asleep, he groped around helplessly until Vexen scornfully dropped the phone into his hands. Soon after he left, it was still another moment of clumsy fumbling before Demyx had the phone actually pressed to his ear. Promptly he dropped back-first into his bed, moaning, "Selphie?"

_"Myde? Is that really you?"_ Selphie's childish voice rang through the phone, stangely hushed and buzzing over thelines. _"I hadta get up really early to call you, sorry if I woke you up. Mom and Dad wouldn't let me call you."_

Mentally, Demyx cursed. Selphie was the only person out there he ever allowed to call him by his real names, and yet the last person he wanted to get involved in the drama between him and his parents. "You sound grown-up, girl," he chuckled blearily as he rolled into the tangled heap of his blankets and hugged to his pillow.

_"Yeah? Well, I am in year nine now,"_ Selphie scoffed. _"But who _cares?_ I haven't talked to you in months! Why do I only get an answer when I call your flatmate's phone? Sheesh, why don't you ever pick up your own phone? And who's that creep who answered the phone, anyway? ..He better not be your boyfriend."_

He laughed, feeling a strange feeling of relief. His sexuality had been another thing that his parents had never really cared much for, but Selphie seemed to accept it like it was nothing. That was the sort of relief he had when he talked to her that he didn't get with the rest of his family. "Uh, that's my flatmate's boyfriend, don't worry," he chuckled, "'m sorry I never get to pick up the phone, but.. they sort of disconnected my number," he apologised, decidedly not adding that they disconnected him because he wasn't able to pay the phone bills. Before she had a chance to comment, he went on. "Selph, it's great to hear from you, but you shouldn't be calling me. The folks'll kill you."

_"That's if they find out." _He could hear the smugness in her voice._ "Wanna meet up, sometime?"_

"You live forever away, you know that," Demyx grumbled, rubbing at one of his eyes.

_"So _what? _There's a local rail transport system, right? And Cloud's happy to take me anywhere on his-"_

_"My_ bike."

_"His bike, your bike, tomayto tomahto. I wanna meet up with my baby big brother."_

He sighed. "Yeah, okay. Sometime. School treating you okay?"

Selphie made a trademark, high groaning noise. _"Eeeeh. It's nothing, you know that!"_

There was a clatter on the other line, before Selphie squeaked a little. _"Oh whoops. Parents up. Catch you later, Myde!" _and an empty, lonely tone that told him that she'd hung up in a rush. Demyx yawned, looking at the way her name shone off on the screen of Marluxia's sleek pink phone. With a sad sort of mutter to himself he shrugged and set the phone on the nearby desk before collapsing once more into the comfort of his bed and falling into dreams of his family.

- - - - -

_"..hands trailed, ghosted, flittered air kisses upon the soft flesh, tasting the heat.."_

He woke up in front of an on computer, the screen glaring up at him like a beam in the darkness. Blinking the tiredness that heaved over his eyes, Zexion swallowed in frustration. The barely discernible digits on the desk clock read five in the morning.. too early to be doing anything properly and too late to go back to sleep. In the otherwise swollen darkness of the room the laptop's screen stood out sorely against his eyeballs, digging into his vision.

Prying his fingers from the keyboard, he squinted and evaluated the columns of text adorning the screen with carelessness. When he wrote in his sleep, the output quality variated from anywhere between surprisingly eloquent soliloquies to utterly incomprehensible rubbish. This new product was alarmingly long, with a choppy sort of paragraphing.

He coughed, effortfully sitting up from the rigid chair and moving to turn on the lights. Lights first, read the by-product of shitty narcolepsy sleep-writing later. His stiff muscles groaned at the movements he forced through them as he groped for the light switch, hands grazing against the wall until he found the plastic switchbox.

The fluorescents on the ceiling above flickered on, a massacre of light succeeding in briefly killing his vision. Grumbling, he fell back into the chair and stared at his laptop. His sight blurred, still straining to adjust, moulding the monochrome screen into a blob of dark and blindingly bright shapes.

Narcolepsy never let him sleep at night, but instead the bitch of a sleep disorder happily dragged him down over the course of the day. At night he'd catch about two hours of dreamy, restless sleep, only to wake up standing and doing something he definitely hadn't been doing when he'd fallen asleep. As of the last month he'd tended to wake up in front of a computer with anything from one to twenty pages of writing looking back at him with just about as much disbelief. Little blobby columns of text in the dark that said to him, _"no, I don't believe you wrote me either"._

Some nights, he'd call up Saϊx in his sleep. He never even remembered doing so and Saϊx never relented to tell him what they ever talked about. If anything his manager was thoroughly unwilling to even acknowledge those calls had ever existed. Other nights, he would wake up huddled into a ball in the corner of the shower, dry, a phone pressed to his ear and a drowsy stranger asking who this was. Most of the time, though, it was the horrible glare of the computer screen in the dark that he'd been cursed to opening his eyes to.

A lot of the stories he wrote in his sleep were like dreams projected onto the keyboard: surreal streams of consciousness, meaninglessly macabre ensembles of words. Some had plots. A work on one night may or may not have been a continuation of a previous night.

It was interesting and scary at the same time to observe to himself that he'd never woken up with a play script in his hands. As much as he lived it, he'd never rehearsed in his sleep.

Blearily he hugged his knees to his chin, rubbing his eyes and narrowing them to examine his overnight work.

_"'Mm,' Zexion whispered into his ear, blowing off stray strands of hair before licking the skin of his earlobe. Demyx released a small gasp as they moved as one, bodies pressed up against the slowly warming wall and hands sloppily exploring each other-"_

Holy shit.

Zexion's mouth fell slightly opened, and he swallowed back dizzily as he felt his pulse go up by tenfold. Morbidly fascinated, he continued reading, giving the small scroll bar a reluctantly surprised look.

After scaling approximately five paragraphs of graphic, pretty damn erotic passages that he didn't know he could write, the actor savagely slammed down the computer screen and ran in the general direction of the shower.

- - - - -

Apparently sex cures everything. Marluxia River was living, breathing proof of such.

Demyx nursed a fatigue-and-sleep-deprivation-and-crying-induced cold through a lot of tissue, and glowered over the spotlessly clean kitchen table at the happy, perfectly healthy couple on the other end. "How?" he would have wailed the enquiry as he looked at Vexen, but his vocal chords were too scraped thin to manage anything above a whine, "_you're_ the one who was having sex with him at obscene intervals of the night, _I_ was in the nearby room _trying_ to get some sleep, how is it that _I _got his cold?"

Vexen frowned and shrugged, just as puzzled himself. There was no denying, however, that beneath that quizzical expression he was smirking just as widely as Marluxia. Demyx had _aural _evidence that those two had had more than a fantastic night at his expense. "It's a scientific phenomenon that I'm currently too elated to investigate. Be quiet," he said, before stabbing his strawberry jam-coated piece of toast with a fork and offering it to Marluxia.

The blond musician across the table made a half-sobbing noise as he downed his unusually bitter coffee. No doubt, Vexen had prepared breakfast, taking care of his poor, sick-boyfriend-who-was-suddenly-perfectly-well. "You're worse than Zexion, man," he murmured into the cup.

"Ah, yes, how was rehearsal? You came back late, so I assume-"

Demyx promptly slammed his thankfully empty cup of coffee onto the table. In Demyx-in-the-morning language, that very clearly meant '_I don't want to talk about it'._

- - - - -

"On the bright side," Marluxia chirruped as he tapped the nicely-bound pages of manuscript in his dripping wet hands, "I've finally overcome writer's block and managed to write our next scene." He said this with competent triumph, grinning despite the heavy atmosphere, his wet clothing and the sound of a deluge outside. Even Vexen's lovely car hadn't been able to completely save them from the heavy downpour that marked the rainy season.

The half-dead cast and crew watched him with a look of disbelief, and the silence that passed over them was interrupted by the very loud noise of Demyx blowing his nose into a tissue. They were all gathered together in a semicircle around Marluxia, and the air seemed to be filled to the brim with uncertainty and some slight wonder. Wonder that stretched from the more basic things, such as questioning why Marluxia had been throwing up the day before and yet was perfectly healthy today, to more complex issues such as how the writer managed to pound out writer's block in the first place. They processed all these questions with half the speed, notably overwhelmed with fatigue.

Finally Axel spoke up, holding up a hand that was noticeably swathed in frayed band-aids. "Marly, I know how much you love rehearsal, but... can we kinda crash today?"

Marluxia looked at him with a bewildered, offended expression. "But I just got these pages typed up and I'm desperate to see how you guys can act them out. I even matched them to some of the songs you and Demyx wrote."

Axel laughed, dropping his hand limply and draping it over the chair he was straddling in an almost trademarked position. Next to him, Roxas was fast asleep, small tuft of spiky blond hair resting lovingly on Axel's shoulder. The rest of the crew barely paid any mind. "Well, for one thing, TerminActor-" he paused, seeing the vacant look on Marluxia's face, and corrected, "Zexion is currently out of commission. He's sleeping his sweet little tush away in his back room. And speaking of sleeping, I think that's what about most of us are still trying to do in our fruitless attempts to recover from yesterday."

Marluxia raised an eyebrow, too perplexed to be angry with Axel. "Did something happen yesterday while I was away?"

If the gang was ever noisy, they were dead silent then. Even Demyx, seated in the back-ish rows and supposedly noisily blowing into a tissue, fell uncharacteristically silent. After a pregnant few seconds of general awkwardness, Axel chuckled morbidly and said, "Let's just say that half of the cast and crew is currently on very sick leave right now. Oh, and that we never appreciated you as a director any more than we do now. You, Marluxia, are a humane man."

"I... see. That really does not explain anything, Axel."

Saϊx took this opportune moment to enter the auditorium, sauntering out from the backstage hallways in his trademark turtleneck and long jacket, casting the _mother _of glares to return any of the ones that had been launched his way. He, after all, had been more than a accomplice in the unspeakable hours of the day before. Ignoring the ocular projectiles directed his way after a while, he set a direct course for Marluxia, gliding gracefully between the auditorium seats before he reached the pink-haired man, withdrawing him into a conversation comprised mostly of some impatient-looking hushed mutters.

At the back row, Demyx loudly sneezed.

Marluxia air-smacked in Saϊx's general direction, grumbling something that was at least relatively derisive. "I just got some news," he informed, raising his voice as he addressed the half-dead masses that should have been his crew that lay before himself. "Xemnas is coming tomorrow to review the progress of the play, the performance of the cast and crew, and to set a concrete deadline."

The entire heap of cast and crew suddenly stirred to life, causing Demyx to look left and right in confusion at the sudden awake-ness in everyone's expression. More or less, they looked _unhappy. _Axel loudly groaned into his hand, waking up Roxas; Luxord pursed his lips and stopped shuffling his cards for a second; Kairi and Namine blinked sadly together and stared into space; Vexen was visibly twitching, and Marluxia quite uncharacteristically looked like he wanted to gut something.

"H-hey," the blond musician spoke up feebly, raising a hand to be seen from the back row. "Who's Xemnas?"

Saϊx gave him a look of contempt, somewhat magnified in effect by the already narrow slits of his unusual yellow eyes. "He's the _director_ and _producer _of this play and the general connection that keeps us in contact with our _sponsors _who will ultimately get the production _an opening night.."_

"Uh..." Hey, _awkward. _The musician grinned lamely. "Oh!"

Saϊx's glare at that moment had chemical properties of sulphuric acid. Demyx gulped, feeling his face grow unusually warm with embarrassment.

- - - - -

The backstage area was a pleasant, dusty little spot that was notable for its inherent scent of paint and dust, musty but ever-present stack of boxes filled with theatre props and costumes, and, of course, Marluxia's director's chair and makeshift desk of crates.

It was a quiet little withdraw, with enough space for Saϊx to sit back and make a generally snooty expression that signified that he was unsatisfied with the state of the world, Marluxia to crouch and muse over pencil-written notes amidst eating vegetarian food, Demyx to sit aimlessly strumming out melodies that occurred to his mind, Vexen to stand at his own makeshift desk and design props, and Zexion to pace around the whole area looking like he was mapping the place in his head.

He probably was, as well as discussing the recent plot events that had transpired within the storyline of the play with Marluxia. As well as throwing the pink-haired playwright a thoroughly unpleasant look every time he so much as fidgeted over the script. Marluxia seemed happy enough, yes, in fact he looked overjoyed that he'd finally gotten his script off its ass and written a full twenty pages of wondrous storyline into it, but even his cheerfulness could be swayed by a sleep-deprived Zexion's singularly _nasty_ demeanour. The playwright kept on also shooting tentative glances Demyx's way, which Demyx ignored uncomfortably.

What made this all twenty times worse was that while Zexion was in a foul mood and happily verbally decapitating anyone who dared to so much as discuss anything off-topic from the production, Demyx still had yet to talk to the actor and make some sort of nervous truce with him. There was no way he was approachable now. Despite all the indicative nods Marluxia made in Zexion's direction, Demyx earnestly did not feel like getting shot at with invectives.

And yet, looking up at the actor, he also felt the ghost of temptation telling him to speak up. Zexion was in that 'thinking stage' then, navy blue eyes peering concentratedly into the very air before him, pacing and turning on his heels about the room. His very movements were controlled and wary, but yet somehow loose. Some tiny gesture in every move he made seemed to spell a deeper story that Demyx didn't know, even though in the end they were just gestures and Demyx was just watching him, trying and failing to read them.

The blond wasn't the most self-aware person in the world, but he could at least acknowledge that despite all dislike he had for the actor and all bitterness he harboured for the hours of torture he'd endured the day before, he did find Zexion fascinating and possibly attractive. Of course it had nothing to do with how terribly aware he was of the slight curve that followed the contours of Zexion's frame around his hips, or the slender fingers ghosting across the young man's face whenever he was deep in thought. Of _course not.._

He paused and wondered why he disliked the man so much to begin with.

And then, frozen amidst a very embarrassing thought process, Demyx's very reverie was smashed head-first into a wall by the sound of Zexion's low voice: "Demyx, I meant to discuss something with you."

_Think fast!_ Demyx smacked a clumsy grin on, gazing up at the figure of the actor with a horribly false smile and teetering on the edge of chattering his teeth as he managed a weepy little, "Ahhhh yeah?"

"The music you composed is questionable for the plot. I don't see the relevance," Zexion explained sharply, indicating to a scribbly-scrawley little paper Demyx recognised as his own. "You need to attempt to touch more into the personalities of the characters, and perhaps have some actual _indication of where they are, _to start, so I shall leave you the decision whether you want to scrap the song altogether or-"

Oh yeah, now he remembered. Zexion was an insufferable Head Bitch Actor who monopolised the play down to what each and every character said and whether Character A twitched or scratched his ear when line 221 came on. Demyx grinned very contrivedly, absorbed the endless artillery of criticism that was rained upon himself, and promptly wished for the first time ever that he could utilise his sitar for violent purposes.

"Demyx!"

All heads turned, some craned, at the violent entrance of Axel as he burst into the backstage area, grin reaching from ear to ear. "Dem, could I catch you for a second?" he asked breathily, smile waning a tiny bit as he glanced between the confrontational-looking Zexion and Demyx. As an afterthought, he swallowed, "Er, are you two busy? Cuz I can-"

"Nawww-" Demyx smacked on a decidedly more genuine grin, waving off Zexion the second the actor opened his mouth to object. "We were just, uh, chatting." _Chatting's the word for it. Yeah._ "What's up?" he said almost forcefully, pushing away from Zexion and walking over to Axel, beckoning towards the door once more before slipping out of it himself.

Axel looked confused for a moment before he dismissed a displeased-looking Zexion's glares as normal and followed Demyx out the door himself. "Guess whose friend of who I may or may not have had to totally suck up to for this," he said, grin returning with a triumphant debonair.

Demyx grinned back. Note, not the triumphant sort of grin, but the '_I have no idea what you're on about but I'll grin anyway'_ sort, but Axel looked pleased enough anyway so he guessed that whatever he was boasting about, it was good. "I've got no idea," he said with mock-defeat, raising both hands in a surrender.

"You really, really don't," Axel nodded in exhilarated agreement. "Look, if you can dig up some of your music, I can get it taken to this guy, and he can sweet talk some studios into maybe giving it a listen. They're tiny little studios, pretty desperate for artists, but they'll work." Here, he'd an almost flamboyant air of self-satisfaction.

Demyx was just too damn happy to care.

The blond musician was bouncing. Physically or metaphorically, he wasn't sure of which, because he was too busy grabbing the redhead in a crushing hug. "Oh my God, Axel, you're my new best friend!" he squealed (because in an advanced state of elation, some men forget that squealing's not all that cool).

"H-hey, get off me before you give me something, or somebody gets jealous" Axel laughed, pulling away even though the backstage hallways were completely empty. "Look, there's a bit of a catch, though. Would you mind pulling out maybe some of your older stuff? He doesn't really care if it's not as good as your newer songs, but.. this guy's got weird policies," he explained sheepishly. Demyx just nodded earnestly, soaking in the words like they were religious texts.

"No problem," he said sprightly, feeling like he was flopping around in the brimming buckets of his own happiness then and there. All of a sudden his cold seemed to dissipate. "Anything. I'll get the records to you by tomorrow, definitely." Here the flimsy facade of calmness broke again, and the blond musician grabbed Axel in another hug. "Oh my goodness, Axel, you're the awesome-est dude in the realm of awesome!"

The redhead pushed him away. "Yeah, yeah, right. I did Roxas in this shirt ten minutes ago."

That was about sufficient to make Demyx awkwardly drop to dead silent and mechanically pull out of the hug, feeling his arms tingle and wondering if he would ever be clean again. "...oh," he whispered, sounding slightly traumatised.

- - - - -

Demyx sat back in his chair and ignored the creaks of protest that accompanied the motion. He remained there, breathing in the air of his room on a rainy evening.

The average space of his room felt empty when illuminated by the impersonal fluorescent light mounted on the wall, casting light on the walls. The walls, or what pitiful space of them that wasn't plastered with band posters, were stained with spatters of paint and coated with a shade of age-induced beige. Unlike Marluxia's aromatic floral-themed room and its shelves of plants and romance novels and balcony, Demyx's room compromised aesthetic and olfactory pleasure for the sake of space, various instruments, a small aquarium and a wall-full of music-related posters and tabs on recording studios.

His fish happily swam about in their habitat, oblivious to the gloom and doom that their owner was currently aureating. Demyx swerved the chair around in aimless circles, staring at the ceiling and into the steady rumble of the rain pouring at the walls. To say that the musician was in an advanced state of lethargy would be an understatement. The cold that had somehow wormed itself into his system had thrown his musical motivation out the window, and no vast amount of loud rock music that was blaring through his incongruously expensive speakers could seem to correct it.

Every inch of the surface of his working desk was obscured by sheets of messily-written sheet music that he simply could not find the melody in. Resting atop of it all, however, were about a dozen different aged-looking video tapes, with scrawly handwriting highlighting the name of each of them. Demyx stopped swirling with a jerk and glared at the pile of tapes. They had previously been like paraphernalia to mark the happier days of his childhood, when he saw movies once a day with his parents. Back when he still was friends with his parents.

It had been bothering him for days, but he finally had found out why Zexion's name was so familiar to him. It had hardly been a pleasant revelation, either, despite the small bubbles that seemed to flitter just beneath Demyx's skin like electric jolts whenever he thought about it. Demyx had just been sifting through the sacks of dusty tapes in a morbidly failing attempt to find his older recorded songs for Axel that evening when he stumbled upon the set of movies tied together by rubber bands, marked _"Special". _There'd been a shrug and an 'what the hell, why not?' and he'd resurrected his tape player, hooked it up to the tiny old CRT television he left mostly untouched in the corner, and shoved in a tape in.

After the shortest hour and a half of his life, Demyx stumbled out of his room, headed straight to the bathroom sink, and sobbed his eyes out over the sink. And then, equipped with tissues and a horrible revelation, he went straight back into his room, ignoring a quizzical look from Marluxia, and put in another movie.

And then he stared, glassy-eyed, at the screen as he watched the movie play out.

They were simple plots with simple characters: romances and adventures with distinct antagonists and heroic protagonists, and sweet damsels to save. But, watching them, Demyx was suddenly able to recall the why and wherefore that he had chosen to pursue music in the first place. He was suddenly brought back to the world of seven-year-old Demyx, wide eyed and snuggled comfortably between his two parents and enjoying the movie. The moment the protagonist, a little boy just a few years older than himself, opened his mouth and broke out in song for the opening number, Demyx decided that he wanted to pursue music. He wanted to try and someday capture just the same note that that child actor had struck. He became a fan.

His parents hadn't really objected at first. They'd enjoyed the first film well enough, and to entertain Demyx's whining pleads they eventually purchased more movies that featured the actor. They were all musicals which often featured the child's parents as characters as well, and they were all the best actors and singers Demyx had ever seen. Never mind that the plots were so simple and the dialogue so contrived that it was enough to make any conventional critic snort and push away the movie, never mind that the films were never that internationally successful to begin with, Demyx _loved_ them and the small family of actors that always starred in them.

His parents didn't even raise an eyebrow when he asked for music lessons after seeing one movie, but at the time they'd had little idea that Demyx would have seriously wanted to turn his love into a career.

And the horrible irony of this?

There was no mistake in recognising the child actor. Sure, sixteen years gone by could change you, but those blue eyes and that sheer _skill _was unmistakeable. The whole family of actors had the most amazing, deep blue eyes Demyx ever remembered. And the little boy actor's name may have been different, his face may have been younger and distorted by the grainy film quality, Demyx may not have seen him or his parents on film for over a decade, but Demyx _knew _him.

He didn't even think twice about not telling Marluxia. As much as he confided in his flatmate, _this one thing_ was... untouchable.

Demyx reclined so far into his chair that it squealed in protest, extended his hands to the heavens, and wondered what kind of awful karma he had, because where crappy career choices and their influences went simply could have not gotten any worse than this. And then, dropping his arms, he covered his face.

- - - - -

The theatre area was decidedly bustling with motion, about twenty times faster than Demyx had used to seeing it in the morning. Unusually enough, the attendance of every member in the production teams was perfect that day, but then again it was hardly an ordinary day. Marluxia had even picked the occasion to wear a dress-shirt over his almost trademark shirts with snarky text on them, and had discouraged Demyx from his initial choice of wear. Honestly, the blond musician had no idea how the production was affected by his decision to wear a Metallica shirt, but he'd shrugged and put on a plain light blue hoodie anyway.

"What's the bustle about?" Demyx yawned into his hand blearily as Marluxia frantically hoarded around a boxful of props, skilfully sliding past any other panicking crew members as they hurried by. "Xem-what's-his-face only shows up at one, and you guys are _totally_ freaking out."

Marluxia shot him a poisonous glare, and turned on his heel, dropping the box of props noisily and setting his hands on his hips. "The _bustle, _Demyx, is that we have to make this place presentable for Xemnas, or else our production may quite possibly be _ruined!_ Do you want the production to be ruined, Demyx? No? Then help me!"

He rolled his shoulders and popped them into place, sniffling back a runny nose and sliding on his feet to avoid a frantic passerby. "Too tired," he moaned.

"Too tired? What?"

Demyx peered up and met a pair of gleaming yellow eyes, and released a yelp. "S-Saϊx!" Demyx cried, ashamedly noticing how his voice hit one octave higher in the man's presence.

Saϊx looked, for lack of better word, really happy. There was a maliciously incongruous smile on his pale lips that actually, for once, reached his eyes, and instead of the dreary trenchcoat and turtleneck he usually wore, he was actually donning a white-and-grey pinstriped dress-shirt that fit his frame quite well. It hardly looked like something he'd wear. In fact, Demyx noted as his eyes trailed over the blazing red hickeys that decorated the man's neck, it probably wasn't even his. "Good morning, Demyx," Saϊx said with frightening cordiality. With a sweet (well, it would have been sweet if it wasn't on Saϊx's face. On his face, it looked like he wanted to rip out Demyx's vertebral column from his body and use it as a spring) smile, he kindly reminded, "Watch where you're going next time. Work hard, now," gave Marluxia a nod of acknowledgement and then was gone.

Marluxia and Demyx were silent in a moment of gracious appreciation for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity they'd had to see Saϊx _happy._ "Dude," Demyx said finally, breaking the shocked silence between themselves, "did Saϊx get _laid?_ I-I didn't even know the guy knew how to have fun! How- how the hell does _that guy_ get some, and I don't?" he wailed in his emotional train of shock, jealousy, and bewilderment. Marluxia just shut his mouth, apparently content to appreciate the wonders of nature in silence and return back to work.

And then, Zexion walked by.

Demyx's breath hitched and he stopped in mid-rant as the actor passed by, no more than a graceful blur of darkness in the backstage hallway but yet aureating grace and condescension. He moved looking only straight ahead, carrying himself with the same self-respect that he had maintained throughout the time that Demyx had known him, yet the dark rings around his eyes and their sleepy droop indicated that he'd been sleeping in his room again.

And then, he turned around and peered at Demyx with a contemptuous look. "You're gaping," he said cantankerously.

"Uh- I-" Demyx stammered, gulping back the emotion that had suddenly taken a rise in his throat. But then, he solidified his stance, gazing back into those deep blue eyes he _knew_, memories flashing momentarily back to the sweet child actor breaking into song on grainy film, and cleared his voice. "Z-Zexion." He stuttered the name, feeling the strange way it rolled off his tongue. "I really have something I need to-"

Suddenly, gazing out from the small opening he'd made in the backstage door, Saϊx called to him. "Zexion, there's something I need to discuss with you."

The actor turned without giving Demyx so much as a second glance and disappeared behind the door. Marluxia cocked his head to the side, lips pressed in an amused line as he looked at Demyx watchfully. "Did I drink too much apple juice this morning, or did you just try to make nice with 'TerminActor'?"

Demyx pointedly ignored the question.

_**end of chapter four**_


	6. Chapter 6

_**A/N: Hello, all! I'm sorry I'm a week later than usual to post up an update. I'm starting to feel really worried about how I'm going to be carrying this, but I promise, there's a lot of material to satisfy you all with and I'm very happy you're still reading! : )**_

_**Review replies and thanks:  
**** Besieged . Infection : **Don't worry. Whether it's a good or bad thing, Scripted is barely over. I'm happy you like it! And yes, of course Zexion is a slavedriver when he's got such an authoritative position! Rawr.  
**luckless-is-me: **Hahaha. Demyx isn't exactly meant to catch many breaks, this story.  
**AccerberRider:** Well, a few years have elapsed, so Dem can't really be expected to remember everything.. I'm glad you don't mind the awkward pacing of my story! It's such a difficult thing to control. . Tea! Dem's family will be rather plot-important, especially later on. Right now is Zemyx time. Yay? Sorry for the typos! Rawr, they're hard to spot, but thank you for the tip! I shall try this! And I shall try harder to spot my silly typos before I post up my chapters!  
**Nekotsubasa: **Thank you! But please, I'm not really worth stalking..  
**PinappleDuck: **I'm happy that that scene gave more of a window into Zexion's point of view of the entire thing. I don't want to go through this story objectifying him- my point is to more or less prove that he's just as human as everybody else in the story. But I'm rambling! Narcolepsy, yes! It's the main disorder he's diagnosed with. Pretty awful condition to have. Post-Sex Saix is just one happy puppy is all. Haha. This chapter has much more than a semi-frequent sprinkle of Zemyx, don't worry about that..  
**orgymoogle: **Marluxia and Vexen aren't actually a couple I tend to support either, but I thought I'd see how they interacted as a couple by putting them together and seeing if it worked. I hope you don't mind! And I hope you liked all the other chapters past the prologue!_

_**Thank you so much for all the reviews! Please enjoy the chapter..**  
_

_**Chapter Five**_

"If I play any more guitar for a week, I swear my fingers are going to start bleeding," Axel bemoaned as he gazed at the plasters wrapped around his hand, picking absently at one.

Roxas smacked at his boyfriend's hand, grumbling, "Don't do that. And if I need to sing any more for my _life_, I'm going mute, and we've got a full rehearsal this afternoon."

Demyx just plucked a furtive melody through his sitar. His eyes remained downcast, though he listened attentively to the exchange between the lovers as they sat with their feet hanging off the stage end. Axel and Roxas and he were generally the only people slacking off this morning, happily reclining and people-watching as everybody else rushed to clean up and rehearse their lines. One would almost think that they were frantically preparing for a hasty opening night, not a mere full rehearsal.

"This is all his fault," the redhead snarled, gaze piercing the air as it carried itself over the musty space of the theatre and fixed like a sniper's scope on the silvery-grey hair of the actor. It seemed like Saϊx had been constantly occupying Zexion with conversation ever since he'd called him over, which was causing Demyx's stomach to drop into a deep pit of despairing '_what do I do now?'._

He bit his lip. "It's not like you to be so harsh on it, Axel... I don't really think it's Zexion's fault." _Wow, _he thought, _I must be sounding strange. But..._ After so much time spent disliking the young man, something in the new knowledge he'd come upon had suddenly caused all that animism to just.. dissipate. "He's just an overachiever."

The look on Axel's face could only be described as incredulous. He did a strange sort of eyebrow-raising, biting his lip before muttering something guttural and plucking at the band-aids on his fingers once more. "Never thought you'd be among the guys to cross over to the dark side, Demyx," he grumbled.

In the back of his head, Demyx figured that he probably shouldn't have been surprised by this, but he was. Axel really seemed a little sullen over his recent development to actually support Zexion. But then, how did one explain _why? _It was a blur even in his own mind: a blur of peculiar uncertainty and hurt. "That's it," he grunted resolutely, handing over his sitar to Axel. "I gotta solve this now." He leapt off the stage, stumbling to regain balance after he landed, and rushed between the auditorium chairs towards the actor and his manager.

He vaguely heard Axel calling after him, "Hey, Demyx, about that music record you brought today-" and recalled that no, he'd been too busy crying over those films to even remember to bring his music, but his eyes were too set on that skinny young man's frame and suddenly his career could be forgotten.

"Zexion!" he called, raising his hand clumsily. "I seriously need to talk to you about something!"

There had been many moments in his life that Demyx had decided that Lady Luck, Fate, and Life all spontaneously hated him. He'd had decent cards dealt his way, of course. He'd gotten this job at this flopping play production, he had a wonderful confidante flatmate, and he had enough money to live for maybe another month before he'd start dubbing himself utterly bankrupt. He was pretty talented with music and had a lot of darn good songs to boast.

But then, he was a klutz, so none of the above really kept him from cursing expletives at Life, Fate and everybody else concerned when his pants snagged on a chair and he doubled over, crashing into the carpeting floor and rolling out the rest of the distance between himself and Zexion. A resounding pain throbbed in the base of his head and after that rough tumble, he wasn't quite so certain about how the rest of his body was holding up, either.

Demyx lay on his back, staring up at the actor, whose wide eyes just stared right back down with the closest expression to surprise he was capable of expressing off-stage. "B-bwah?" the musician mumbled, grasping at the hem of Zexion's jeans.

"You just _physically _evinced that you're an incorrigible i-"

Demyx didn't have time for it. "Z-Zexion," he grunted, suddenly completely serious, despite the overall tousled nature of his situation, "I'm serious. Just five minutes.. something. Please?"

Maybe it was how his world was spinning around with the actor as a focal point, or how the fact that he was lying down and Zexion was standing up, but it seemed like, momentarily, Zexion's expression had softened. Saϊx looked very much ready to protest, yet the moment he opened his mouth Zexion's hand was up and the actor had silently told him to shut up without even looking at him. Crouching down and taking Demyx's hand in his own, he said, "Get up, you fool."

It was with surprising strength that the seemingly frail actor helped Demyx up, and their touches lingered even once the musician was standing and brushing the dirt off himself. He only slipped his hand out of Zexion's firm grasp when he started fixing his hair, grinning sheepishly and ignoring how Axel and Roxas were gaping, wide-eyed, from the stage area and Saϊx was glaring acid. "So, uh, backstage?" Demyx laughed nervously.

The actor rolled his eyes and turned on his heel, walking in that general direction.

The backstage hallway was surprisingly desolate, much to Demyx's happiness. It seemed like most of the cast and crew had decided to move their work to the backstage area, the stage, or the general auditorium, so the dank and narrow hallways were currently boasting a lot of privacy.

"You have five minutes to waste my time. I request you start now."

Zexion's clear voice cut into the humid, musty air of the dark, and Demyx cleared out of his self-induced reverie to find the young man all but glaring at him. "Well, are you going to start talking or not? Xemnas is coming in a few hours and I need to talk to Marluxia about the script. Additionally-"

"Why are you such a bitch?" he blurted.

_Oh damn, Demyx. Best opening line to spilling your heart and childhood out to a guy. Ask why he's such a bitch. You didn't even call him a bastard- you __**had **__to say __**bitch.**_

Zexion stared at him with a still, unnervingly impassive expression. "...Is this what this is about? If my memory doesn't fail me, we've had this conversation before. I'm going," he said simply, before doing that motion of turning on his heel that he seemed to have perfected, making for the door.

He would have made it, had it not been for Demyx's hands grabbing both of his shoulders. "No wait! I phrased that wrong!"

He looked at him coldly, body gone frighteningly rigid under Demyx's hands. "You phrased it perfectly." Zexion shook and rolled his shoulders, obviously uncomfortable at being touched by anyone. "Get your hands off of me."

The musician pursed his lips, but drew back his hands. "Look, five minutes isn't over yet. I just want to talk to you." Something about the way Zexion's back was still to him was making him extremely nervous. He fought off the urge to take the actor by the shoulders again and spin him around, if only to see his eyes and expression better in the dim, obscuring darkness.

"I know what you want to talk about, and it's a waste of time. My attitude has no effect of notable magnitude on the production, and it's only an issue with you if you wish to make a matter of it."

"You're wrong," Demyx cut in, feeling his voice breaking a little as he objected. Self-consciously he plucked at his blue wrist bands and the zipper of his blue hoodie. He had to get this out of his system sometime, but when actually in the presence of Zexion, it seemed like every word was a chore to press out and speak. It didn't make things better that the actor still wasn't looking at him. "I don't really want to talk about your attitude. I don't like it, but I've got something more important I want to talk to you about."

Finally, Zexion turned around. Arms crossed over the fabric of his shirt, he looked at Demyx confrontationally. "Then _get to it_."

"Yeah, well.." How does one put this? Why was he even talking to Zexion about this? Why did the actor even have to _know?_ Surely he had his own reasons for not wanting to let the world at large know about his childhood. Demyx had a strange gut feeling that he was going to unsettle some very comfortably settled dust into the air by bringing up this topic at all, but he also knew that this would be the perfect way to maybe, _finally_ get under the young man's tough facade.

"...I, uh, I like the name Ienzo a lot better than Zexion. Sounds better," he mumbled ineffectually.

Only it wasn't ineffectual at all.

Zexion's arms had dropped, and he was staring at Demyx with wide, glossy deep blue eyes. The perpetual frown on his lips had loosened and his lips sat slackened, barely parted in surprise. But then, like everything, that look was only momentary and his stance steeled with painful wariness. He snarled, "What do you want? Money? Do you want me to get off the production?" A hesitating pause and he broke eye contact to stare suspiciously elsewhere, "Or do you want _something else?_"

It hurt Demyx to realise that as hostile as he was being, Zexion's tone was trembling. Guilt swelled in his chest and he quickly took Zexion's fisted hand in his own, exclaiming, "No, no way! If you wanna keep it secret or something then I don't care! I just-" he stopped, staring at those pretty blue eyes and once more recalling the many films and the many sittings where he'd once stared into those same eyes. "I.. When I was a kid, I _loved, loved_ Ienzo's movies. So much. You... You've influenced me in a way I've never known, until recently. I didn't even know it was you, but then, it just.." he bit his lips until they stung with protest. "You made me love music."

He paused to realise that the fist that had once set between his clasped hands had loosened, and Zexion's pallid hand grew warm between his own. He was looking at him with a vacant expression of a genius absorbing an earth-shaking revelation- which was probably exactly what was happening. Softly, the actor affirmed, "So.. I see. They were never that critically acclaimed, after all," he chuckled darkly. "It should figure you of all people liked them."

Demyx nodded, lightly squeezing Zexion's limp hand. "Yeah, well, I loved them. I just want to know why you stopped. It never made me happier than to sit down between my parents and watch you and your mom or dad just, you know, start singing. Whatever it was you were singing. Even if it was just a crappy song about your character's day, I loved it. I hummed it every other moment. I-" he laughed shakily, feeling earnestly like some obsessed fan finally meeting his idol. "..Yeah," he finished.

"Demyx.." Zexion looked at him, and then away, hand shaking strangely. "That was almost twenty years ago."

"..I know. I just.. wanted to know what happened to Ienzo. Why, Zexion? What happened to him? And his family?" Demyx could have laughed at himself for placing 'Zexion' and 'Ienzo' as two different people, because those _eyes_ were so unmistakeable, but they just couldn't be the same in his mind. "Where is he?"

Zexion yanked his hand out from between Demyx's, cradling it close to his chest and eyeing the musician warily. Weakly he shuddered, "Ienzo is _gone. _I- I'm going."

Axel was waiting for Demyx outside, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and the sitar resting next to him, looking like a resigned soldier. "Do I want to know what that was about?" he asked, smiling warily as the blond emerged from behind the door, looking forlorn. He made the casual, shameless observance of "You look like you just got verbally crushed."

Demyx smiled bitterly, risking a sideways glance at Zexion, who was standing on the podium and discussing something with Saϊx briefly before disappearing behind the stage curtains. "I'm _confused._" As an afterthought, he added, "And sorry, I forgot to bring my tape today. I got it at home, though, so, uh.."

Axel nodded, waving off the musician's uncertain words. He wasn't wearing any rainbows of wristbands this time, only a silver bracelet with checker patterns and a heart dangling from it, which Demyx speculated was a gift. The bracelet made a melodious chiming sound as Axel waved his skinny arm in the air. "It's 'kay. The dude's not that picky beyond the specifications I already gave you. So just it to me later."

Demyx's smile shifted to a guilty one. "S-sure."

There was a loud cracking noise, and all heads turned towards the dais of the front door of the auditorium. The front door had just been quite forcefully smacked close.

There, clad in a wrinkled beige turtleneck that Demyx really, really recognised stood a tanned-skinned man with immaculate grey-white hair that swept over his shoulders and hung in long locks down his back. What was most striking about him was how his imperious figure hovered and gazed over the entire hall like it was his kingdom. That, and the feral smile on his face.

"I, am here," he announced in a manner that could only be described as thespian, raising his arms in a wide arc and standing for everyone to behold.

Down by the backstage hallway entrance, Demyx blinked vacuously and Axel promptly buried his face in his open palm, groaning into it. The air of absolute _awe_ that the white-haired man induced was almost smothering in its overwhelming abruptness.

Saϊx, who stood in the centre of the podium with his arms crossed and an irritated tug on his lips, took the honour of breaking the dumbstruck silence that the theatre had been held by. "You're.. fashionably early," he remarked, sounding like he was earnestly trying to suppress a gigantic, swelling bubble of happiness behind a low, slightly growling tone. Demyx had never heard that tone before, but if he didn't know better it was Saϊx being _husky._ The musician felt a full-body shudder.

The man who could have only been Xemnas beamed amusedly, dropping his hands and sauntering down the stairs and directly past several frozen members of the crew. He continued down his path until he reached the podium, which he gracefully _leaped onto_, walked directly towards Saϊx. "I wanted to come early and see my… crew… at work," he said slowly, voice naturally low and.. seductive.

Then, he raised two hands and grasped the contours of Saϊx's face, and drew the manager into a passionate kiss.

Demyx's jaw promptly dropped, Axel just quietly groaned into his palm and the rest of the members of the production looked on silently.

..Well, at least _that_ certainly explained the blazing trail of hickeys decorating Saϊx's neck.

After what seemed to be a painful eternity, Saϊx pulled back and gave Xemnas a look of admonishing fondness. Hell, he looked _amused._ It was the sort of look that love-struck housewives gave their husbands when they arrived home late from work and pulled out a large rumpled box of chocolates in apology, and _dammit,_ Demyx did _not _just think that.

Warily, Demyx whispered to the redhead beside him, _"..Nobody told me he was dating the director!"_ he cried hushedly, voice breaking to remain quiet. _"Why doesn't anybody ever tell me this stuff!?"_

Xemnas must have had super-hearing, because at that moment he swerved around and peered in Demyx's direction, staring at him with almost luminescent amber eyes. "Actually, neophyte, I'd much prefer to be referred to as _The Superior_.. and," he corrected with an disconcerting smile, "we're married."

He evinced the statement with by raising his and Saϊx's left hands, clasping them together lovingly. Even in the dim lighting, Exhibit A, two _honking large bloody diamonds_ resting on the likely-platinum bands on their ring fingers, sparkled brightly.

Demyx had only just finished closing his open, gaping mouth when the new revelation made it slacken and hit the floor _again._ His eyes accompanied the sentiment, widening until he looked something like a fish. He could have said something suck-uppy or maybe congratulatory, but he couldn't, because really? _Honking large bloody diamond-platinum ring._ One he had never noticed before. It'd been enough of a heavy-magnitude revelation to find that Saϊx had found someone to get down with, but Saϊx being married? To the _director?_

Aside from obssessing over the purely un-computability of the facts, Demyx's mind was occupied with lamenting how people like Saϊx were happily hitched whilst people like him were suffering solo. Just.. _how?_

Outside the world of Demyx's inner monologue, Axel, who had risked a glance his way amidst the suspense, crumpled into barely suppressed laughter, and Xemnas peered on intently, like he was actually expecting something productive to come out of watching Demyx try and fail to process the facts.

Across the large theatre, Marluxia coughed uncomfortably. "Xemnas, welcome," he said, strangely detachedly as he strolled towards the stage area, "you caught us by surprise, as you can see."

Xemnas turned and looked at him with painful slowness, nodding. "Seeing how I had some free time, I decided to grace you all with my presence earlier than planned. You can begin a full rehearsal as soon as possible," he spoke as he gracefully descended in a leap from the stage, nodding at the silently round-up cast and crew that stood at his beck and call. "Marluxia, may I see the script?"

There must have been something terribly earth-shattering about Xemnas asking for the script, because Marluxia turned five shades more pale at the question and the lined-up production crews' breaths simultaneously hitched. Even Axel's did, and the redhead had been chuckling his nerves out just a few moments previously. "Certainly," Marluxia said strainedly, "it's backstage. This way."

"...Dammit, he's gonna change around everything," Axel grumbled as he glanced at the figures of Xemnas and Marluxia discussing the script, a ways off and out of earshot. The redhead's typically careless countenance had disappeared in the stead of a worried, despairing one. Roxas stood by him, watching the two men with a look of curiosity. They stood together amidst the warm, tasty scent of vegetarian-Chinese food that Demyx was ravenously consuming whilst also casting puzzled glances at both Xemnas and Marluxia.

He was quickly learning that Xemnas was the sort of guy who was assured that he had absolute control over every minute modicum of a detail. He didn't even assert his control like Saϊx and Zexion, he just simply took for granted that his power was unquestionable and went along like he owned the world. Currently he was cheerfully tapping at the script and saying something to Marluxia.

Marluxia, on the other hand, looked like he'd driven a car into a wreck, crushed his pelvis and been picked up by Annie Wilkes. He arms were limp at his sides and the snarky message on his undershirt ('_Smile- it's the second best thing you can do with your lips!')_ was out-of-place against the sheerly aghast expression on his face. Well, aghast wasn't quite right. It couldn't be put in one word but it more or less spelled '_oh shit, this is going to suck'._ The sort of look one gets when they're chucked off a helicopter at the foot of Mount Everest with five metres of rope and one jacket and forced to climb. Probably the look Faust had when the Devils showed up to drag him into hell and proceeded to tear him limb from limb. _That_ look.

Demyx couldn't hear what Xemnas was saying precisely but, judging from Marluxia's expression, it was probably something along the lines of _"I ate his liver with some fava beans.." _The musician finished the last bit of the faux-chicken strips he'd been eating with a pained expression, throwing away the Styrofoam box he'd been eating out of and wiping his hands on napkins. "So, ah," he began, "what's Xemnas doing?"

"He's burning _Fast Cars,"_ Roxas muttered.

"Huh?" Demyx blinked, not catching the reference.

The younger blond sighed and shook his head. "He's changing everything around in Marluxia's script. He does that every time he comes around, actually- he just _changes_ stuff. Not really for the better. You'd think he was changing it for the sake of changing it. Might as well _burn _it."

Demyx strangled back an _"eep!"_ as Luxord suddenly materialised behind him, absentmindedly Charlier-cutting through a deck of cards in one hand and resting the other hand on his hip, looking on the scene with resignation. "This game will be a long one, gentlemen," here the tall man scanned over the theatre, taking in the melodious buzz of movement as people moved about their business. "It seems like the lead actor has realised it, too," he observed.

"Sleeping Beauty's doing what he does best?" Axel muttered something under his breath. "Yeah, good, better for us all. Can't have too many control freaks at it at once."

Saϊx took the opportune moment to walk by, giving them all a poisonous glare as he handled the tall load of records piled in his arms. Apparently the post-sex glow he'd been lighting up the town with just a little earlier had mostly faded for his usual demeanour. "If you have time to sit around and gossip, you should be practicing," he rebutted, before kicking open the backstage door and creeping away.

Axel rolled his eyes, but turned to look over at Roxas and Demyx anyway. "Ya hear that? Might as well. That," he jabbed a thumb in the direction of Marluxia and Xemnas, "is going to take forever."

The day generally rolled out with, finally, an actual full rehearsal, with Xemnas sitting back and watching, tapping his chin thoughtfully as Roxas delivered his lines. Axel, sitting just at the foot of the stage, grinned as the blond even as he strummed on the guitar and Demyx accompanied. The blond musician smiled to himself bitterly when he played, sitting in a folding chair next to Kairi at the keyboard. The theatre seemed strangely full of sound when all the musicians were actually attending for once. But, despite the pressuring nature of the rehearsal, everyone seemed to be performing fine.

At least, up until Zexion entered. Demyx hadn't even seen him wake up, but there he was, sauntering onto the stage and- Demyx stared, hand slipping momentarily on the sitar- not acting. He just stood there, seemingly vulnerable in the expectant silence of the stage and small in even the baggy fabric of his pants and shirt, eyes wide and figure frozen. The entire hall fell into a surprised stare as Zexion just stood there, hand on his chest and the other outstretched, standing and ready to deliver lines that never escaped his lips.

And then he turned, staring straight at Demyx. By now the entire cast and crew was looking on without a word, some raising eyebrows and others just _shocked._ Zexion, the professional, had just.. frozen. "I," he stammered, jerking his head to look at Xemnas, who was peering at him with one elegantly raised eyebrow. "..I'm sorry. Can I see the script?"

Marluxia, who'd been sitting beside Xemnas the entire time, bit his lip, nodding, and stood without a word, approaching the stage with the script in hand and a totally unreadable expression on his face.

Awkwardly, Zexion's eyes scanned over the script before he turned back to the play, hesitatingly slipping into the guise of his character and handing out his line with the passion of a wooden stick.

The play went on from there with relative smoothness, if one could just ignore the sheer vapidity with which the lead actor carried through his lines. Demyx might have actually dared to be angry with him if he wasn't so _shocked._

They finished at the last scene that Marluxia had written, and as Roxas's character shouted out the final lines, the blond was suddenly the best actor on the stage. It seemed like Zexion's uncharacteristic hesitation and dazed demeanour had given every other actor some newfound confidence, and even as the only professional actor struggled helplessly with his character everyone else worked to their full potential. It would have been almost cruel, if the morale hadn't gone up so much.

Xemnas sat back in his chair, hands slowly colliding in the powerful movements of clapping as he looked on with satisfaction. Roxas, Zexion and Namine had been the actors on stage at the time, yet even as the two blond young amateurs bowed graciously and smiled triumphantly at each other, Zexion stood dazedly a ways away. The tan-skinned director rested the side of his head in his hand, smiling strangely. "I'm impressed with the progression," he stated with his trademarked slow, low rumble of a voice. "But I can't help but ask what happened to _you,_ Zexion."

The actor looked up and stared emptily at the director, seemingly ready to revoke with a confident tone and perhaps regain some of the confidence that had been shattering crack by crack throughout the entire practice, but then that rebellious look disappeared and he just looked down again, with nothing to say.

Demyx, who stood inconspicuously off-stage, just gaped. _What._ Just, _what?_ This was it. That short young man standing on the stage with the air of a child being scolded for bad behaviour, head bowed and painfully silent- that was the powerful, condescending Zexion. The actor with a stainless career and a scornful air. The only professional actor in the entire theatre, and as Demyx had found out, the inspiration of his life.

When Zexion looked up, bangs swaying with the motion, his eyes were wide and almost childlike, glossed over with strong, rebellious and withheld emotion, but he spoke not a word and stood as rigidly as a concrete wall against a storm.

Demyx dropped his sitar, suddenly fighting back the urge the leap on the stage and- and what?

He didn't know what, but he knew that that sure as _hell _wasn't the Zexion he'd gotten used to in the time he'd spent at this theatre. The facade had suddenly decayed like all wall crumbling to dust in the space of a thousand years, only fit into the timeframe of a few second. No- that face, those eyes, that air-? _That's.._

Zexion bowed briefly, and walked off-stage without ever saying a word.

.._Ienzo.._

"Oh, who _cares _if he was a crappy actor just this time?" Demyx grinned, earnestly feeling like the muscles on his face were going to snap from whiplash if he was going to dare grinning any wider. "He'll be okay next time. Stop depressing, Marly." He clapped a hand on Marluxia's shoulders as the playwright, quite frankly, bawled his eyes out.

"I don't believe this!" the pink-haired man exclaimed, smothering his face in tissues as he huddled up on a tiny ball in his folding chair, having not moved an inch ever since the practice had ended. Xemnas had long left, expressing his happy approval of how the play had done, and a few actors had released the breath they'd been long holding in suspense and wrapped up their things, and gone home. Saϊx had left Xemnas's side, looking purely _furious _as he marched backstage. Axel was grinning with borderline _cruel_ happiness. Vexen was just standing there, arms crossed and looking like he was analysing the entire thing, and Marluxia?

..Well, Marluxia was a mess.

"He's the _professional actor_ I begged my ass off to Xemnas to get hired and suddenly he's like a robot on stage!"

Demyx's lips quirked up and his forced expression of seriousness cracked again, for the fifth time since rehearsal had ended. He couldn't take it much longer- if Marluxia was to look up right now and see his flatmate grinning from ear to ear, he was probably in for a good verbal whacking. "I- I gotta go," he said, patting Marluxia's shoulder and looking meaningfully at Vexen, before scooting away towards the backstage door.

He could barely contain himself as he raced down the musty hallway towards the back room. While he might as well have been, Demyx wasn't particularly concerned about the terrible performance Zexion had given on-stage. The feeling of disappointment that had been sitting like a brick in the pit of his stomach had shattered and dissipated the moment he'd seen _that look_ on Zexion's face at that moment. The musician had been momentarily just so convinced that the inspiration from his childhood, the one thing that had caused him to turn his life around in favour of music, was gone for the jaded, scornful actor, but _that look? _That was like two seconds of irrefutable proof in Demyx's heart, that maybe that child actor named Ienzo, who sang his heart out on cheap taped films, was maybe somewhere still in there.

Lame, probably totally wrong and misplaced hope, but it still fluttered like a butterfly and made the musician almost _jittery_ with a strange happiness.

His train of thought, however, came to a screeching halt when he smacked in a full collision with Saϊx. Demyx bounced back, stumbling to regain balance. "S-sorry!" he cried, laughing sheepishly, looking up at the manager..

..and promptly freezing in terror.

_Holy crap, God, I'm going to die here and now._

The pupils of Saϊx's eyes were almost nonexistent, and the man's hair had seemingly grown rumpled with the pure, unadulterated rage. Demyx could have sworn he was radiating the base of absolute rage. "...You have five seconds to remove yourself of my space before I eviscerate you," Saϊx said with a deceptive calm, voice about as emotional as a sponge. Xemnas's husband looked about a hundred-and-one-percent less happy than he'd been that morning.

Demyx nodded swallowed back a pathetic whine, inched slightly to his left, and then continued to run towards the backroom, hoping and praying he wouldn't find Zexion in a gory pile of remains there.

Zexion, it turned out, was completely fine. He stood stock-still in the centre of the backroom, amidst all the tossed-about throw pillows and pages of handwriting and books, back to Demyx. He was seemingly completely unaware of the musician's presence.

The blond sucked in a breath, looking around. This was the second time he'd ever come into the backroom since he'd ever met the actor, yet the appearance had already shifted around a little. If anything, it had gotten messier, but the unmistakeable scent of ink and crusty old paper still persisted in the air, and the entire place just suited Zexion more than ever. "Ienzo," Demyx began testily.

And suddenly, Zexion turned around with alarming speed, shaking with anger as he stomped towards Demyx and seized the blond by the collar, barking with a cracked voice, "Don't- don't you _fucking dare_ call me that!"

They stood there in shocked silence, Zexion's pallid and small fists curling in a tightened snarl in Demyx's clothes, standing close to each other and staring, only slightly disturbed by the actor's heaving breaths.

"Ienzo- no, _I _was not so much of an actor as I was a desperate little child rebelling against the world around me," he breathed, eyes burning with uncharacteristic passion that seemed to wipe away the eyebags and weariness like skilled strokes of paint across a canvas, "and _you_ were nothing but a silly child to be inspired by my half-baked performances. I _am_, currently, an _actor. _And you are not, _not _going to distract me. Do you understand?"

Demyx bit his lip, hands grasping the bony contours of Zexion's hands, trailing calloused musician's fingertips across the soft, translucently pale flesh. "What changed you? Why'd you stop making those movies? Maybe you weren't the best actor, but you were a _kid_, and you were _happy._"

Zexion laughed mirthlessly. "Things.. changed me. If I was to put on the persona of a true actor, I had to discard the name and countenance of that silly child Ienzo." Here he gave an effortful shove, pushing Demyx so far that he backed into the bookshelf behind himself. "What is it that inspires you to be such an amazing _distraction,_ Demyx? What sort of witchery do you _do?"_ his voice shook, trembling between emotional wails and angry shouts. "I don't even _know_ you; what business do you have sinking your dirty hands into my immaculate career?" He paused, head bowed and obscured in the darkness of the room and the ruffled locks of his curtain of blue-grey hair. "Whatever it is, _stop it._ Get out of it. You've been an obstruction long enough."

The blond froze, frame fitted against the dusty edges of the bookshelf, and just breathed, eyes not leaving Zexion for a moment. "You're.." he murmured, sounding about as surprised as he was supposed to be offended, "you really suck at talking," Demyx muttered, shifting away from the bookshelf and into a more comfortable stance. "I suck at body language, but that cracking in your voice? All those unhappy twinges in your expression when you look at me? You don't want me to go away, do you?"

Zexion's eyes shuttered momentarily, taking on a steely, frozen hooded look as he seized in a sharp breath and warily turned away.

"Do you?" Demyx repeated.

There was a pause so pregnant the very silence that filled it was deafening, like flurries and trains of thought could strangle the emotion that was filling the inches of the air. Zexion looking was everywhere but at Demyx and the blond was holding his gaze in a standing fight. "I.." whispered the actor finally, as he buried his face in his hands, tangling the glistening locks of hair with long fingers, "Go. I can't stand you. Every word you say is like a wave of voltage on an electric chair. It just makes it worse that you _liked _that emotional child _Ienzo_."

Demyx bit his lip. "You _are_ Ienzo, you crazyhead. Zexion, Ienzo, same damn thing. You're the same guy who made me make the choices that I did, the same guy who bitched at the entire cast and crew of _Final Limit_ for five hours straight until we performed okay, the guy who's face flashed through my head when I told my parents I wasn't going to go into the family business, the same guy who I..." he trailed off into hesitation.

Zexion looked up from his hands, staring at him expectantly. "What?"

"..The guy who I loved the moment he walked into my crappy family television screen. The guy I've needed for a few _years," _as he spoke, memories of his family flittered through his mind like a film on a reel, voices replayed in his mind and the sheer disappointment on those eyes stared at him from his mind. He chewed on his soft lips, like he was chewing back all the emotion that threatened to push down his dams. "You've made me take the path I've taken, and I'm not gonna regret it. I'm- I'm not."

Demyx looked up from the floor, and found the young man staring fixedly at him. Saw the surprise glinting in those familiar, pretty eyes. "_Damn it_, Demyx," Zexion barely whispered.

"Yeah," Demyx agreed, as he shrugged and took long steps towards the actor, raising a long finger and tracing it down the soft curves of his face, "Amen to that."

Zexion looked like he'd been thrown some sort of puzzle that he just simply couldn't even begin to comprehend. "I can't-"

Demyx cut him off promptly, "I don't care what you can and can't do." He chuckled softly, wistfully. "You're.. you're really something. You've got the same attitude that every other snooty guy had when they refused to listen to my CD, but you're the guy who made me make those CDs in the first place and keep coming back. And I kind of.. like you. A lot."

And then, spurred by sheer impulse, he drew the smaller frame of the actor into a tight embrace, burying his face into those soft locks of hair and their cool, sweet scent. Zexion limply relented, if only from the pure surprise by which Demyx had taken him. Slowly and hesitating, his hands hovered and wrapped around Demyx, though, and he sighed into the musician's neck. "You must be out of your mind for this," he admonished softly. If Demyx didn't know better, he'd think that Zexion was smiling fondly.

**END OF ACT TWO**

_**end of chapter five**_

_**A/N: Uwah! I'm so worried about how I pulled this off, as a writer. Please tell me how you thought of this chapter. Thank you again for reading. ;w;  
**_


	7. Chapter 7

_**A/N: Hai gais! :D How are you all this week?  
Me, I had a bout of illness for two days, which I dropped in and out of like some sort of weird pothole in the road. For this I managed to evade the stress of school for a blissful two days, but come Monday it's back to misery. That's all about me, though - have some cookies for your wonderful reviews, views, alerts, faves.. aw, heck, all of it. Thank you so much!**_

_**And a special thank you to Besieged . Infection for agreeing to take on this big baby of a story for beta reading. So far she's been amazing with editing the chapters. : )**_

**_Review responses: (Yeah, these again! Are these okay to have? I mean, I like to communicate with reviewers, but if you find this plainly annoying or something, please don't hesitate to flick me off!)  
Blood . Rave: _**_Wakakaka- Saix is a beeast. : )  
**IHeartGirlyGuys: **Yay, Xemmy's descriptions were all pulled off okay, then! I'm glad for that much.  
**Hipular: **Thank you for your encouraging words! : )  
**Nekotsubasa: **Awesome, good to hear that I pulled through that tough spot okay. Seriously, those boys were a bit difficult to write with at that point. .! But.. my Xemnas is a bit of a snooty asshole- just a fabulous one.  
**AccerberRider: **Aw, gosh, sorry to hear about you getting grounded. Hopefully you pulled through that okey. Yes, well, Xemmy did talk excruciatingly slow in the games- heck, that was the first thing I noticed when I first came across the guy. A snail crossed the road twice, unharmed, and he was still talking on and on.. And you're right- there _are_ going to be daisies, but far and in between a deal of character work and the like._

_**Okay dokay.**** On with the story. Enjoy!  
**_

_**Chapter Six**_**  
ACT THREE**

_ "Like that- just- just hold it," Demyx moaned through grit teeth as he clenched his hands into fists, pulling rippled billows in the soft white sheets. He bit back most of his small, guttural sounds of erotic pleasure, blush lacing colours across his olive skin. If he even did so much as move, even shudder beneath Zexion's hovering, electrifying touch, it would be all over- but God, did he want to. God, did he want more. Just a little- just to rock his hips up a little more against the brushing skin and let their bodies fully meet, to complete the harmony of their flesh-_

Three pages of happy, gratuitous porn glared text-sized holes in Zexion's burning vision. So did the realisation that, _damn_, it was a Saturday and he didn't have rehearsal today. He mostly didn't have anything to be awake _to-_ why couldn't he just go back to sleep? Back to unconsciously writing the amazingly embarrassing erotic novel that the products of his recent sleep-writing adventures were accumulating into? Gulping back a flush, he scanned the first sentences; it wasn't all that _bad,_ but he was in desperate need of changing their names.

Zexion coughed into his hand, nervously gripping the sleeve of his black sweater between his teeth, and chewing. _Damn._ He could write this for a _living _if he wanted to, even though he'd rather be better known for something less personal than... well... smut.

He didn't confide in anyone. He was self-dependent, never needing the consolation or assurances of anybody else to stand upright. Hell, he'd made it through a lot of life's problems on his own, there was no way that he was going to cave in only now that he started waking up to pages of eloquent erotic prose, starring none other than himself and a certain musician. (Certainly, it had been Demyx who'd hugged him less than twenty-four hours ago, but said musician would probably find it a few levels of creepy if he found out what Zexion wrote in his sleep.) Still, Zexion was independent, stand-alone and totally cool about it.

...was what he liked to think, even as he fumbled with the numbers on his phone key pad before finally clicking 'Call'.

_"Zexion, it's far too early," _the gruff voice on the line answered after a single remarkable ring and an effective beat of silence. Zexion didn't say anything, mind going blank as his eyes skimmed over a particularly _detailed _part in his writing.

"_Zexion,_" the voice broke into the silence echoing in his head, _"Is something wrong?"_

The actor swallowed, curling into a small ball and tugging at the bands of his loose pyjama bottoms. "Lexaeus," he blurted, lowering the computer screen, "for the last few nights, my subconscious has been writing a remarkably detailed smut novel. It's thirty pages long, as of this morning. I'm one the main characters, and the other is Demyx- this man in my play- who hugged me yesterday. Is that wrong? Because, well, damn this, my subconscious writes porn."

Lexaeus, his best friend of a few years and never quite the talkative man, was somehow especially silent after this proclamation. Zexion didn't have to have a degree in psychology to realise that his predicament screamed _Freud, _and _Freud_ was probably exactly what his best friend was thinking in that heavy silence.

Or, you know, maybe Lexaeus was just a little too surprised at the actor's little confession at five in the morning to formulate a coherent reply. One couldn't be sure.

"Lexaeus," he breathed, "that's it. It's the weekend- let's take a trip out of town, shall we? I'll- I'll bring the manuscript. You can read it on the trip." He knew that his friend would comply.

()(())()

When he didn't sleep in until two in the afternoon, Marluxia liked to get up at ungodly hours of the morning and just enjoy the placid solitude. If one thought that the world was dead at midnight, then the world was in _oblivion_ at the blissful hour of five in the morning on a Saturday. After the beaten working generation had returned from their T.G.I.F.F., the city-island population had simultaneously fallen into a fourteen-hour coma and would not be waking from it anytime soon. Saturday was the day for the theatre cast and crew to shut off their brains and forget how awful life was, and Sunday was the time to party. But whichever day, almost nobody could be caught awake at five.

Marluxia found the silence, the cool air, and the lack of stress buttons refreshing.

Well-rested after crying himself to sleep over the play's progress the night before, the playwright clambered out of bed and stopped in front of the mirror, and winced. You knew something wasn't right here when the person staring back at you in the mirror was starting to freak you out. His thin, shapely eyebrows looked thicker when they were matted with his hair, as the fuchsia locks stuck out blatantly into air and did strange spikes in all the wrong places. His eyes were haggard and framed with the wan evidence of sleep deprivation. His eyes were so bloodshot that he was partially convinced he was suffering from some sort of ocular haemorrhage.

In the words of a true novelist, he looked like crap.

Biting his lip unhappily, he impulsively gave his own reflection the finger and sauntered off towards the shower, passing right by his phone dock and charger. The sleek pink device sat serenely on the immaculate charger, not lighting up with any messages or missed calls from Vexen. Marluxia smiled weakly as he imagined the props director, even at this hour, probably still hunched over some chemical apparatus. The best thing about being a researcher was the flexible, nobody-really-cares-how-long-they-work-as-long-as-they-do-something hours. The worst thing was the insane devotion that some people, like his boyfriend, put into their work once they actually got down to it.

He stripped off his clothes, walking into the shower and sliding close the translucent shower door behind himself. Then he proceeded to just dazedly stand there, unmoving, within the small confines of the bare, dark blue shower area, staring hesitantly up at the shower head. Marluxia's most hated and loved routine of the early morning was the shower, because he felt fantastic when he got out, but the _shower itself_ was the most hellish, electrifying soaking a person could ever get.

Showers in the early morning after a long, cool night usually meant routinely plunges into freshly-imported iceberg water. Marluxia didn't have to go far if he wanted to see how Jack Dawson felt after getting chucked off the sinking Titanic; he and Demyx had never gotten a water heater. When they'd first moved in, it was the sort of matter they'd lazily pushed back, settling that sooner or later, they would purchase one and have it installed. Now, they couldn't afford one, and they suffered the very literally chilling consequences.

He winced as the freezing cold water hit his skin in ceaseless waves, and reached for the soap. There was nothing quite like sponging up your own misery about your flopping play in the agony of an icy morning shower, but he wasn't exactly going to stand there forever and catch pneumonia.

()(())()

"The great roommate emerges from the depths of sleep," Demyx proclaimed as he slammed the door behind himself a little louder than he wanted to, voice still clouded by the heavy stupor of a long sleep.

Marluxia looked at his flatmate with an incredulous expression, before sniffing resentfully and returning to chopping the cabbage on the kitchen counter. "Someone's an early ray of sunshine," he commented, sniffing again, louder as he wiped his apparently running nose on the flower-patterned apron he wore. The fluorescent light cast on him made him look thoroughly sickly, even for a man as well-built as he was. "How many hours of sleep did you get last night?"

You could call it schadenfreude, or just too much personal joy, but yes- Demyx really was an early ray of sunshine. Clad in the clothes of the day before, hair a mess of withered gel and stray locks, he sprang forth from his room with the energy of a rabid squirrel. "Like, two," the blond said as he bounced about the kitchen, stopping in the middle of opening the refrigerator to whistle as he looked at the great darkness of the outside world. "Wow, it's dark out! Think it's going to rain today?" he asked, as if it wasn't normally dark at five in the morning in the rainy season.

_Bloody morning people. _The pink-haired man shrugged, back facing his flatmate as he continued chopping away morosely. "Who knows," he grumbled, voice low- he hadn't a clue about the cause of Demyx's happiness, and was still a crumpled frame of misery since the yesterday 'disaster'. "What are you doing up so early?"

Demyx hummed lightly, drawing a carton of questionably fresh milk from the higher shelf of the fridge and skipping towards the dish-shelves. "Couldn't sleep." He'd been thinking too much, rolling around in his bed and grinning too much, to even consider sleep. Most Friday nights found the musician sulking in his bed and sleeping twice as much as usual, well into the afternoon of the next day, but this morning he was just too hyperactive to sleep at all. He was desperately looking forward to next Monday. "What're you doing?"

The chopping continued, as the cabbage was remorselessly shredded to tiny, professional strips of what it had been, accumulating on one end of the chopping board. Marluxia waited a while before he answered with a light, "Preparing the side dish for the steamed chicken. Chicken's marinating."

The blond blinked as the realisation washed over him. Of course- every month, Marluxia prepared steamed chicken with side dishes and took a morning hike to the hillside located uptown, taking the funicular to the top of the hill. There, he would pay respects to his ancestors on the sea-facing side of the hill cemetery, burning incense and offering the food dish. Despite his very open-minded attitude, the writer adhered strongly to the deep-reaching tradition of respecting his ancestors, though Demyx always found it strange that he never met up with living relatives to pay the visits together. Demyx himself had been on one of the trips, and the sober nature of it struck him as poignant and almost exotic.

"Would you like to come along?" The blond jumped in surprise as Marluxia asked him the question.

"I can?"

"Why not," Marluxia grunted. "It certainly might do well to get you off that crack you've been on."

()(())()

Five hours later, the blond musician winced as the chilling breeze bit into his skin, tugging Marluxia's borrowed pashmina scarf a little tighter around his neck. Demyx cast the playwright a furtive glance before turning back to the view from the top of the hill, looking down upon the large expanse of the city and the bay stretching out before him. It felt wondrous, to be able to see the stretch of black, restless sea on every line of visible horizon, only clouded by the inky swell of storm-clouds in the west.

Awkwardly, he stifled a sneeze into the scarf before looking back at his flatmate again. Marluxia was still there, kneeling barefoot before the traditional gravestone, holding the burning incense sticks in his hand and murmuring something with his eyes closed. Demyx never really was aware of how long the pink-haired man would remain there, but in this stretch of time he was never really sure of what he was supposed to do. It felt wrong to hover around Marluxia as he respected his deceased ancestors, but seeing the man grasp the incense and kneel so reverently Demyx felt a little wrong by not doing anything himself.

He turned back to the view, too used to it to appreciate it. At least it was a very clear day. He could point out his own decrepit apartment building among the cluster of many blocks of twin buildings, even from here. Sadly, though, the theatre was hidden behind a hill that marked the more southern, industrial side of the island. Demyx smiled lopsidedly, imagining that Zexion probably lived in some classy, high-brow apartment complex with three floors and giant rooms, probably located somewhere along the northern beach areas. The actor was probably sleeping, even as he thought about him.

The sound of his roommate's cell phone ringing in his pocket cut into the clear, frigid air like a knife, and Demyx jumped in surprise. Anxiously, he looked to find Marluxia completely undisturbed by the ringing, probably too far away to hear it. Still a little embarrassed, the blond yanked out the phone and snapped it open. "Who'sit?" he demanded, flustered.

Selphie sounded energetic as ever as she exclaimed, _"Myde! Booyaka! What up!"_

Demyx jerked at the sound of her voice, before shuffling politely away from his flatmate, and away from the graveyard. There was some crude feeling about answering and conducting a phone call in a heavily ornate, traditional cemetery, standing among large and regal gravestones and the scent of burning incense. "Quite a bit's up," he whispered, only feeling secure after he passed beneath the large, intricate, sober black gateway that marked the cemetery and collapsing onto a nearby bench overlooking the island. "Selphie," he admonished, "not that I'm complaining, but can you really call me at this hour on a Saturday?"

_"I swear, the parents are like dead to the world right now, sleeping all cosy. Is that all you care about anymore?"_

"What? No!" he returned vigorously. "Geez.. What's going on? Is everything all right?"

Selphie paused, thoughtfully, and that was enough to get Demyx worried.

_"Weeell... Yes and no. Mom and Dad are happy again, which is a partially good thing. Cloud still can't decide whether he's straight or gay, whether he wants to go out with Leon, Tifa or Aerith, yakka yakka.. mostly a disaster there."_

Demyx sighed. "That's it? That's _normal,_" he chuckled with relief, rearranging the soft scarf around his shoulders in a futile attempt to keep warm. Like anything that belonged to Marluxia, it smelled lightly of flowers, which contrasted ironically against its impersonal, solid beige colour scheme. At least it was a good source of warmth up in the high, cool altitudes of the hill. "I thought you had something more, I don't know, catastrophic to tell me."

_"Well, that's not all,"_ Selphie countered, sounding miffed. _"What I really meant to call you for is... uh... Well... You know Uncle Hojo?"_

The musician felt a full-body shudder. Uncle Hojo- holy crap, he never liked to hear the word 'Uncle' put with 'Hojo'. Technically the mad scientist-doctor was just his parents' neighbour, but out of sheer respect Selphie was obliged to call him by either 'Mister' or 'Uncle'.

To give a little history, Demyx had many an unhappy childhood memory revolving around that one insane neighbour, starring his old nemeses Mr. Needle and Mrs. Foreign Chemical- well, most unhappy memories made were also partially his fault for being so stupid to begin with. The _'Trespass and Be Mercilessly, Slowly Gutted and Strangled By Your Own Intestines'_ sign on Hojo's fence should have been sufficient warning, but it wasn't Demyx's fault he couldn't read at the time and didn't know what an intestine was.

If Demyx had any money to pay for a medical check-up, he wouldn't be surprised if the doctor came up to him and asked him, very curiously, _"Mr. Demyx, do you know why you have an extra chromosome?" _In fact, he'd probably say, _"Oh yeah, about that thing. I'm not sure- I think it belongs to a blue Smurf monkey cat. My neighbour injected it into my bloodstream when I was like, five..."_

He gave a long, drawn-outwhimpering noise.

_"I guess that means yeah," _Selphie responded commensurately. _"Well, uh.. he got engaged. And seeing how we're the closest people to family for him, heh.. We're... uh... invited."_

Wait, dammit. Demyx could have sworn for one moment that he heard that the man responsible for his extra chromosome and maybe a few other molecular anomalies in his biological makeup had just got _hitched. _Brokenly, the blond gave a very, very disturbed laugh. "Ha... ha. Haha. Selphie, God, that is the worst joke ever. That's like, so low below the belt you're kicking my ankle. I think I'm going deaf. If I'm going deaf, it's that guy's fault. He probably injected some sort of creepy-ass membrane into my ear for all I know, I was drugged half of the time so..." He offered an ominous, dramatic pause, just waiting for her to start laughing at him. "You're kidding, right?"

_"I'm serious. He's marrying Ms. Lucrecia from the clinic."_

Demyx dropped the phone. Half because he had just heard that Doctor Hojo, the officially the shadiest doctor on the island, was getting married to sweet-faced, kind Nurse Lucrecia, and half because his roommate had chosen that exact opportune moment to grab him by surprise and clap both hands over his shoulders. The blond gave a loud yelp of alarm, before his voice failed him and the yelp turned into a weak sort of squeak, and Marluxia backed off immediately.

"Oh- damn-" Demyx cursed, grinning embarrassedly as he picked up his roommate's phone, quickly checking it for damage, and nodding at Marluxia as the man peered at him with a raised eyebrow. _'Sorry!'_ he mouthed at his roommate, before crushing the phone against his ear. "Sorry, Selphie. You still there?"

_"Doctor Hojo is marrying Ms. Lucrecia from the clinic and we're invited to the reception," _his sister deadpanned.

He felt his hopeful expression go limp. "...Well, uh, geez. That is singularly the most disturbing thing I've ever heard," Demyx murmured uncomfortably.

_"Not just 'we' as in me and the folks and maybe Cloud and a few others, Myde. You too. He wants you to come."_

He swallowed, as if swallowing could help him register to the magnitude of what Selphie had just said. "Selphie, that's funny, 'cause I haven't come home in years, and going to Doctor Hojo's _wedding party?_" he laughed, infinitely more disturbed than amused. "No. Just no."

Selphie was quiet.

Demyx frowned, looking to the phone, before shifting uncomfortably to look at Marluxia. The pink-haired man was standing by the railing, idly gazing out at the scenery like he had been doing only a few minutes ago, patiently looking back at him after a while and smiling warily. Demyx returned the smile with a weak, pained one.

"Selphie, you there?" he asked, after the silence had drawn on too long.

_**"Screw you!**__ I'm sick of this!"_ Selphie's scream burst through the phone, crackled to a buzz as her voice raised beyond the volume level. _"You and the folks are just totally miserable over each other, you know that? It's a pain- it's a pain in the __**ass**__! I swear, if you can't work up the balls to go to some stupid wedding reception to Uncle Hojo's creepy-ass wedding, just 'cause your parents are coming too, then you're the wimpiest guy I know, and you're my brother!_

_ "Like, five years! Five years and you and Mom and Dad have been sticking to your stupid little emo corners, wallowing in self-pity and hating on each other- I gotta put up with that! Thinking about it, it's pretty __**pathetic**__,__Myde!"_

He winced at the outburst. "Selphie-"

_"I meant it. Screw you."_

She hung up.

()(())()

"I called Mickey. He has a room available for us," Lexaeus said after the silence between himself and the shorter man settled into a comfortable one. The constant, soft rattling of the bus and the whispering of the air-conditioning had grown into background noise, restless but subtle. The actor's much larger best friend sat, arms crossed, peering into open space, dark eyes narrow in an expression that could have been regarded as hostile by onlookers, but was truly his own way of showing casual comfort.

At the window seat, Zexion hummed a little noise of acknowledgement, eyes not moving from the newspaper spread over his legs, face resting comfortably against his open palm. They both let the scenery of the large bridge the bus was crossing over to the mainland pass them by without a blink of an eye- both young men were so used to it that it meant little to them.

They looked an odd pair. Height differences aside (one being absurdly tall while the other being eligible to be described as short), Zexion's simplistic choice of dress, a long-sleeve black shirt and black jeans, stood in contrast to his friend's formal dress-shirt and dark brown slacks. But the stark dissimilarity was something that hardly even occurred to Zexion anymore. Perhaps twenty years back, when he was hardly even four feet tall, it had been the main reason that he'd been initially afraid of the his parents' physiologist's older, taller son. Yet, time had worn the sentiment thin and solidarity wormed into the niche that the childish fear left behind.

Lexaeus finally turned, looking at his friend with a stern, solid frown. "You said you would let me read your work in progress."

His hand clenched and ripped the end of the newspaper page, and Zexion bowed his head to conceal the slight flush coming over it. Damn… he had said that. He should have known that Lexaeus of all people would persist, if he was especially curious about some matter. "It's... lascivious," he grumbled, almost under his breath, as his slender, pallid fingers played over the leafs of thin, printed paper sticking out of his shoulder-bag.

"That's to be expected," Lexaeus said in a blunt, unashamed monotone as he took the manuscript that actor shoved at him reluctantly, and promptly began flipping it open, unabashedly beginning to read into the first few lines. Zexion fought back a flustered comment, unsure about how to react to seeing his best friend reading his 'work' on public transportation- it was more or less the 'public transportation' part of it that unnerved him. There's usually something unnerving about your best friend reading your unconscious smut fantasy when there are sweet little old ladies happily discussing their grandchildren in the seat behind you.

"You haven't told this Demyx fellow about your trip?" Lexaeus asked, as conversationally as he, in all his laconic complexity, could be.

Zexion sniffed and turned his newspaper page without looking at anything that had been on it, blinking slowly. "He... It would be awkward. He doesn't need to know."

The silence in which Lexaeus looked at him was not a satisfied one. Closing his eyes, Zexion breathed and hoped, for once, that sleep would choose an actually opportune moment to flood over him. No such luck. "Just read the manuscript," the actor huffed after a few seconds.

()(())()

Marluxia's cell phone fit perfectly in his large hand, and it sat cradled in his palm warmly as he stared down at the phone log before looking up at his roommate. Demyx occupied himself with scarfing down the chicken rice, perhaps with even more vigorous gusto than usual. He tended to be passionate whenever they ate out uptown, (because, hey, meat was a precious treat when you roomed with a hardcore vegan) but this time he seemed less hungry and more emotional.

The pink-haired man eyed him with hooded blue eyes, feeling a little empty. Demyx hadn't said much since his sister had apparently hung up on him. Even a stranger could assess so much about the blond from just the dazed turmoil that clouded his eyes, and Marluxia? Well, to Marluxia, on most days the blond was an open picture book in an obscure language- he saw the pictures and could conjecture plenty, but the definite details lay in the indiscernible print.

"What did she have to say?" Marluxia tried finally as he delicately brought a long stalk of bok choy to his mouth with his chopsticks, playing at nonchalant as Demyx only continued his conquest over his plate with all the same violence as before.

"N-nuffin," the musician grunted through a mouthful of rice, before swallowing the obscene amount of un-chewed food and washing it down with milk tea. Marluxia was pretty certain that the other lunch-goers in the humble, open-out street-food stall were starting to stare, but he ignored whatever gazes they may have been accumulated. Instead, he very slowly, very pointedly chewing his own food before swallowing.

All the while, he remained holding his gaze on Demyx.

"Really, nothing," Marluxia said flatly, evidently unconvinced. Delicately, he clapped his plastic red chopsticks together, rhythmic to the sputtering of an old car passing by on the street. His vegetable dish was nearly finished, and the coffee cup beside the plate sat empty.

"Yeah," Demyx insisted, a confrontational tone teetering about his voice as he took another aggressive swig of frothy, sweet milk tea.

In Demyx's mind, he had promised to himself that he would never regret choosing music over his parents. And now, whenever he thought of music, Zexion would come to mind- gazing at him in the darkness of the back room. Would he give _him _up- would he give up who he was as a person- for his parents?

He'd decided: _No._

Selphie's voice would shatter the entire image like a bullet through glass. _Screw __**him**__?_ It wasn't _his_ fault his parents had cast him out because he liked men, or because he preferred playing music and entertaining over writing reports about coral life and how increased water levels affected the aquatic population. He refused to let Selphie's feelings rub off a residue of guilt on himself.

"Monday can't come soon enough," Demyx moaned into his tea, and Marluxia just shook his head, saying nothing.

All Demyx wanted was to see Zexion. Maybe the actor's assuring presence would be enough to clear his mangled thoughts; to remind him what he was fighting his domestic war for anyway:

For music. For all that he was himself. For Zexion.

()(())()

The last time he could remember anything, he was curled up atop the sheets of a motel bed, feeling the heavy weights of sleeping pills drag his mind into a shutdown. Lexaeus was standing by the bathroom door, watching him silently as he fell backwards onto the soft mattress. The man had been obviously taken by surprise. Zexion had just wanted to maintain a normal sleep pattern for once, thus his attempt. Saïx's steady, hollow voice taunted in his mind, _"It's not doing for you to go fall asleep in the midst of rehearsal. Why don't you at least try and keep a normal sleep schedule?" _

_ Yes, well... I did it. I fell asleep. Isn't that all it takes to maintain this 'regular sleep schedule' you speak of so reverently..?_

Day after day after day he'd tell himself that as he stared at the looming ceiling above him, soaking in the darkness and silence of night and ignoring how his mind was running at a hundred thoughts per second.

See, Zexion _couldn't._ Even when sleep did come over him, the brother of Death sometimes didn't seem nearly as merciful as Death himself. This was what occurred to him as he shuddered at the cold touch of the door handle (well, he knew for some reason that it was supposed to be cold- one hardly feels much in a dream), hovering into the backstage area of his imaginary theatre. Any moment now; he'd break out of this theatre, break out of the dream and wake up at some ungodly hour feeling like his head had been crushed under a truck-full of drugs.

He only had to wait for it.

Waiting usually meant wandering around his phantom world, slipping through it like fingers through water. He could never grasp it; it floated about him so teasingly that grasping a solid detail was impossible- but he knew it was dark, like there was a show going on. A faint tune floated through the air, an aberration from all the right notes-

- _What were the right notes?_ Damn it; suddenly he knew where this dream was going.

The voice of a child shuddered from beyond the thick satin curtain that separated the backstage from the front lines, and Zexion took a seizing breath.

_ "Golden tresses frame your face,_

_And your pillow's soft as silk._

_Here the moon is standing by_

_Like a pool of milk._

_"...Let the dreamboat come along,_

_And take you for a ride._

_You can choose your favourite teddy bear,_

_And carry him inside..."_

"Stop singing," he whispered with his held breath, hating the haunting, childish high that the notes pitched. "You're off-key. You're so damn off-key."

The child stopped for a moment, short silhouette standing completely still, shadow stark even from beyond the curtain. Zexion reached out, hands clenching around the cloth, fingers digging into his palm. His hands would not stop shivering. Suddenly, louder than the sound of his own thoughts, encompassing the world around him, the child's voice returned. It was his own.

_ "Sailing through a starry sky,_

_Holding onto teddy tight._

_Know that mummy is still close by_

_Through the whole dark night..."_

The sound of his own mind was deafening him. Zexion's hands gripped the cloth so tightly that it nearly tore, and with as much effort as he could muster he gave a yank at the curtain, again and again, until it finally tore with a spectacular ripping sound. As if sentient for a moment, the curtain fluttered in the air momentarily, before falling down into a messily folded pile on the floor. He took a long, exhausted breath, satin still crushed between his fingers and palm, and looked up.

_ "Have a taste of sparkly star_

_And drink a sip of moon._

_And when you feel that you have gone far_

_Then sail to your room."_

Upon the stage stood a tiny child, facing the audience of a million people. Saïx, Xemnas, Marluxia, Axel, Roxas, Luxord, Vexen, Lexaeus, Lexaeus's father- everyone he ever knew, staring up at the stage with blank, unseeing eyes. They all sat there, unmoving, like audiences to a story they had no relation to, only interested in seeing the end. Every seat was filled except one, naked and empty in the front row. Zexion felt turgid with dread just looking at the audience seats, for reasons he could hardly fathom, and he turned his unfocused sight back on the child.

He hadn't turned to face Zexion yet, but he already knew what he would look like.

Blood would be spurting from his small, childish nose as the cartilage decomposed. His mouth would be shut serenely yet dark red, viscous evidence would say otherwise. The blend of saliva would bubble and froth as it set forth and dribbled down his chin, and his mouth would slowly grow malformed and cave in as his gums bled dry. Huge, blotching dark purple bruises would bloom on what could be seen of the rest of his skin, like turgid haemorrhages bubbling just below the skin.

Rat poison and the Warfarin in it would do that to you. Warfarin would do that to your parents too, if you weren't careful. It could do it to the whole audience.

Little anticoagulant dosage, accumulating into heavy-as-lead coagulant dosage, all piled into a few glassfuls of that sweet champagne they served at the theatre. It was a mostly adult audience, cast and crew, and everyone would want to celebrate the successful opening night of the first stage play by the Ishida family, wouldn't they? Because the Ishida family was going to be successful this time, with their cute little boy singing the lead and their famous physiologist-manager peering from behind the curtain and watching them perform-

_Why don't you have a sip of champagne, kiddo? It's not that concentrated, here, just a sip- you deserve it, good job tonight-_

The singing began again, screaming and worming into his brain, savagely impaling his thoughts with the child's sputtering, watery, off-key performance-

_ "-HAVE A TASTE OF SPARKLY STAR_

_AND DRINK A BIT OF MOON-"_

And he, he let himself go deaf with every pounding note.

()(())()

Zexion woke up forgetting how to breathe, paralysed as he lay in the drenched sheets of his own sweat. For ten seconds he lay there, eyes wide and unseeing, peering into the blinding rays of sunlight that marked the new day, completely unmoving- he'd forgotten how to.

"_And when you feel that you have gone far_

_Then sail to your room…"_

He was awake but the dream continued, his own childish voice in his head growing softer and tormenting the edges of his mind like taunting, tormenting phantoms. Zexion tried to ignore it- focus, dammit, focus on what you _see_, look at the way the light bleeds through the sheets you're buried under, it's a nightmare you'll disconnect from in only a moment-

()(())()

Lexaeus's voice sharply cut right through the sound of his own stale breathing. "Zexion," he murmured from somewhere out of sight.

He shut his eyes tightly, curling into a ball beneath the sheets that Lexaeus must have surely placed over him, and shook his head. Finally, he let out a sluggish groan, feeling the side-effect headache of the sleeping pills setting in like rapidly drying concrete. Extenuated from one nightmare in a thousand, the actor kicked at the blankets and the knot his frame had wrapped itself in them, smacking away Lexaeus's large hands whenever the man attempted to help him.

"Drugs... shit in pills- drag one down… to an abysmal state of drug-induced, hebe-hebetudinous instability," Zexion announced through his misplaced locks of hair as he rolled out of the bed.

Groaning in pain as he stood up, he wavered shakily and rubbed his temples. It hadn't been a fun night, but- he glanced at the clock on the wall, and the Roman numerals 'IX' stared back at him in cheerful, incongruous lettering- at least he'd slept through all of it.

"Do you still want to visit the hospital?" Lexaeus asked after him warily. Zexion turned to find his best friend and travelling partner fully dressed and still frozen leaning over the bed. "We can postpone the meeting with your parents."

His nose wrinkled in pain, but he nodded. "Of course I still want to go. It's not as if they'll care whether I'm late or not," he added bitterly, before slinking across the cold tile floor towards the bathroom, struggling to close the creaking, large wooden door. Mickey always was too ornate with his classical, castle-like taste in room design, but his motels were the only ones Zexion trusted off the island. With a nod of finality towards his friend, Zexion shut the door behind himself.

He was in the middle of peeling his sweat-drenched pants off when Lexaeus's sturdy voice carried through the door and made him leap. "You were dreaming."

Zexion nodded sourly to nobody in particular, pausing in the middle of disrobing and peering at the door intently. "Yes," he confirmed slowly.

"Was that Demyx man in it?"

He thought back on the empty front seat among the listless audience, and started, bewildered. "..No, he wasn't."

Pacing towards the door, half-dressed and all, he strained to pull it open and found himself staring face to face with Lexaeus, exclaiming with wide eyes, "Even _you _are sitting there, Lexaeus- _everyone's_ in the audience, watching my childhood fall to pieces, but Demyx- Demyx isn't." He held his gaze, as if horrified by the revelation himself, looking down at his own involuntarily shaking hands. "Demyx isn't. He doesn't sit there, taunting me with silence and an uninterested gaze- he doesn't watch me as my childhood starts spurting out blood in a gratuitous Warfarin-induced haemorrhage-

"He's _not there in my nightmare, _Lexaeus."

How could have he not noticed? From the very first day he met Demyx he felt at ease with the musician, so at ease that ironically he felt scared of feeling so relaxed around him. Even when he wasn't around, he had plagued Zexion's waking thoughts, but.. in the theatre of his dreams, listening to the sound of his own very last stage performance with his parents ring in his head, gazing back into the glassy eyes of the audience, _Demyx was not in his dream._

"Zexion," Lexaeus began solidly. He didn't move an inch from his spot, remaining there like a sturdy pillar.

Zexion blinked, dark, long eyelashes flittering wildly. "I- I... What is it?"

Bluntly pointing down at the smaller man's pale and very much bare legs and the pants gracelessly pooling at his ankles, his best friend said very levelly, "Either put your pants back on, or go back taking a shower."

()(())()

That morning, even as he dozed off in the running shower, even as he recalled what he was doing in Mickey Mouse's overly extravagant Disney Castle Motel (who put 'Castle' and 'Motel' together as words in the first place?) in the first place, even as he remembered what he was doing out of town, Zexion smiled just a little.

()(())()

It was an hour later when Lexaeus, leaned steadily against the ornately decorated walls with his arms crossed, was looking straight at him when he emerged from the bathroom, wrapped warmly in the supplied regal blue bathrobe. "I'm sorry," Zexion murmured softly as he shuffled off towards his small luggage bag, "I fell asleep momentarily in the shower." The other man didn't say a word, and he didn't need to. Zexion cast him a sharp glance through his damp, mussed-up locks of hair, before turning back to rummaging through his clothes.

"Demyx."

His searching hands stopped moving at the sound of the name. Slowly Zexion twisted his body to look up at the man, to watchfully look across the distance at Lexaeus's body language. The way the man said one name could have been interpreted in a million ways, just judging from his body language- that was the sort of person that Lexaeus was. Leaning against the wall, gazing attentively right back at the actor, Lexaeus looked strangely stern.

The actor suddenly felt terribly self-conscious, now that he remembered that Lexaeus still had the manuscript of his work. Of course, after a few pages of reading the musician like he was some character in a novel, Lexaeus would know his name. He dreaded to know what the older man thought of that embarrassment of a writing product.

That work- the very thought of waking up to it made Zexion flush with anger at himself. He felt ashamed- something about writing about those supple curves and the arching motions, even if it was his subconscious sleeping mind writing, even if it was just _fiction_- it felt as if he were abusing and tarnishing Demyx's existence with his _lust._

Writing- writing _anything-_ to him, was like grasping at the bathroom shelf and tearing it down, cutting open all the shiny, sharp plastic cylinders and scrabbling at the slipping pills spilled across the floor, taking them by the handful and shoving them into his mouth. Cocaine, with instant pleasure, instant gratification, just rub into your gums and feel the powdered glory seep into your bloodstream. That, before the eventual shutdown and "_damn, Zexion, this isn't right_" feeling would slowly worm in like a needle slowly entering his flesh and digging into his stomach. The lust in Zexion kept on writing that awful manuscript, kept shoving the crack handful by handful into his mouth until he felt like vomiting.

Because, dammit, he was _happy_ right now, Demyx was happy, he was on the way to_ actual ecstasy. _So naturally, he felt like waking up to writing again, still waking up to the sticky and spilled evidence of his heated desire, was something like a _big fucking disappointment in himself because he couldn't. Just. Wait._

Weakly, he said, "Yes... Demyx is his name." Lexaeus said nothing. On many days he took his friend's trademark moments of silence as normal, calming even, but this was one of the moments where it was frustrating. "I'm not here in Mickey's flashy little motel out of town in some corrupted endeavour to continue lusting after him, Lexaeus. I'm here to visit my bedridden parents. If you have something to say, say it." _Say it, tell me how depraved a child I am even after all these years you've known me._

Lexaeus shook his head and stood away from the wall, looking at the actor sternly. "I'll be honest with you, Zexion," he said, normally choppy words suddenly drawn out, making a strong impression, "we two, we were never romantics. Naturally, for you to… feel this, for this person you know-" he paused. "This is unusual."

He grit his teeth and tightly clenched at the bed sheets as he knelt over his bag. "Is that all?"

His friend nodded, before disappearing behind the door.

_**end of chapter six**_

_**A/N: **_**_Sorry that there was no delicious Zemyx interaction this week. Things are a bit awkward for these two now that all the secrets are out in the open.. Okay okay, please tell me how you liked this chapter. I am always open to constructive crit, thoughts, monodies and monologue; whatever you feel. I love to hear what you think.  
tl,dr? Reviews are delicious rainbows with chocolate sprinkles on them. C:  
_**


	8. Chapter 8

_**A/N: Hi all!**_

_**How's life? I'm so sorry for the sporadic one-week-or-two-week update pattern, but I haven't been able to write out much lately. Midterms, studies, all that. But this is the usual writers' block spiel, I see, so I'll leave it at that. : ) Thanks again for all your lovely, supportive reviews! I enjoy reading them like you wouldn't believe.  
**_

_**Another special thanks to Besieged . Infection for beta reading this story so awesomely and patiently. :D**_

_**Review responses:**_

_**xxSkitten: **__Thank yeww! But please don't nom on my head- my head doesn't taste all that nice. Have a cookie, instead? What makes me happiest is that you called my story 'original'- there are so many wonderful Kingdom Hearts fanfictions out there, so to have my own called unique is an honour. Thank you very much!**  
luckless-is-me: **__Yay! That rocky chapter made it out okay! I was trying at a whole new level of freak-out, so I wasn't sure if I.. well, freaked out the audience enough. As for all the questions that I'm sure were brought up by Zexion's nightmares.. yeah. They'll be answered. But it'll be a long while yet till you get your answers.. but I hope you enjoy that time!**  
AccerberRider: **__Woah, Marly's looking a bit like a dark horse in this fic. He's a moral supporting pillar for the tearful writer herself at times, too, so I'm glad he comes off all right to readers as well! And yeah, it's a creepy-ass wedding... Look forward to it? And I'm a little worried about how comprehensible Zexion's dream is... even though it's mainly a question that shall be answered later.**  
PinappleDuck:**__ Ah! I wasn't very quick this time. Eheh. Well, if it helps any, both Dem's and Zex's parts in that chapter will mean a lot in the coming ones!**  
orgymoogle:**__ Great to see it doesn't look like their relationship isn't progressing unnaturally!_

_**So! Enjoy this chapter!**_

_**

* * *

**_

_**Chapter Seven**_

Uncomfortably, Roxas shuffled about in his loose jeans, digging his fisted hands deeper into the pockets of his chequered hoodie and glancing around suspiciously. "You win, Axel," he said with a deep breath, "on a Sunday night, when I could be chilling with Xion or, you know, actually doing my homework, you make me come to some _party..."_

Axel beamed, poking his vibrant red hair between the strings of red balloons, and proceeded to yank the helium-suspended objects downwards in bouncing, rubbery motions, obviously thrilled with them. "I am such a _bad influence_, I know," he said as he tied the dozen strings in a loose bowline around his skinny wrist, watching as they bounded to the motion, "and these are the coolest balloons ever."

Roxas eyed them with scrutiny, eyes narrowing to look at them in the darkness- Vexen seemed to find something romantic about leaving only one barely luminescent lamp on in his front yard, or maybe it was Marluxia's idea. Aside from the shine they reflected efficiently and the way the bobbed whenever Axel jerked his wrist, the teenager honestly couldn't see anything special about them. "Why'd you bring balloons anyway?" Roxas asked. "It's not like this is a kid's party or something."

The redhead shrugged. "You don't get the romantic notion, kiddo," he grinned, his sharp white teeth showing in the darkness, "or the thrill of burning a balloon."

His deep blue eyes widened and his frown extended a centimetre, but Roxas said no more after that point. Taking a moment to remember that this was Axel, his quirky, pyromaniac backpacker boyfriend and a total foreigner to his meek, routinely world of homework and studies, he breathed deeply and looked around. Aside from Vexen inside the house, preparing some food dishes or other, no one had yet to arrive yet. Obviously avoiding the man, Axel had taken to the verdant front yard of the immaculate house and dragged his boyfriend with him. "Where is everybody?"

Sure, he'd known that he'd come with Axel just a little tad early, but he'd expected somebody else to have arrived by now- Marluxia and Demyx, if anybody. The whole trip to Vexen's house on Axel's motorbike, Roxas had been grinning and cringing to himself at the thought of the pink-haired man in Vexen's house, wrapped in a frilly apron and reciting ingredients to his boyfriend as he gently set to preparing some light snacks for the party, and Demyx slaving about carrying various barbecue cooking utensils, Vexen barking offhand orders his way.

Axel sniffed, obviously not amused by the thought of the pink-haired man. "It's pretty routine to be late to parties in our circles, Roxas," he explained, before nonchalantly adding, "Marly's probably still trying to fit on his panties, I imagine."

Roxas' eyes narrowed, but he didn't comment.

()(())()

"You do it best on Sunday nights," Marluxia hummed as he snatched the threadbare sheet and pulled it over his nude form ever so slightly, brushing the length of his thumb across Vexen's bare chest as he shifted comfortably.

The faint, distant bass beat of the makeshift disco the crew had erected was barely audible in Vexen's room, upstairs and doors away from the heart of the party. Demyx could vaguely be heard singing karaoke. Of the many monthly traditions that Marluxia observed, his favourite was by far the _Final Limit_ crew Sunday party that the group had been observing ever since the conception of their play. The sex with Vexen that occasionally accompanied the party was a pleasant bonus.

...Oh, who was he kidding? They both knew that, aside from trying to forget the trying hardships of being a sporadic writer, he mostly came for the sex.

Vexen snorted into the dry-smelling mattress, wrapping his arms across Marluxia's wide chest and exhaling warmth against his skin. The playwright smiled distantly, watching off into the claustrophobic space of his lover's bedroom- every other inch that wasn't the bed was an organised mess of a myriad of research notes. Vexen could keep the ground floor as immaculate and high-class as he liked, but the above floors starkly indicated his true nature as an inner, devout researcher.

Marluxia, for one, liked the cheap scent of sixty sheet-per-gram paper fattening the numerous stacked, organised folders and the slight smell of chemicals wafting about from the small chemistry set by the window.

"Think Demyx will be all right?" he asked as he combed his fingers through Vexen's dirty blond hair.

Vexen grunted. "He should be fine. It's not as if Axel should have some particular fondness of bullying the fellow into something ludicrous," he reasoned, sounding weary.

"You're right," Marluxia nodded, "that's what I love about you, you make sense." Fondly he raised the locks of long, loose hair to his mouth, trailing a kiss through the strands as he let it fall through his fingers. "I love you and all your chemical intellectualism."

The scientist muttered something into his chest, before shifting and resting atop him, propping himself up on the bed by his elbows and looking at him in the eyes. "You too. You and all your frequent rendezvous with episodes of writer's block."

Marluxia froze. Oh God- writer's block. Writer's block, like the head of the hydra; the second you cut it off, you get a moment of relief, a second of repose. And then, five more heads sprout right back from the neck, back at you, fangs and all, and then they start laughing maniacally at you, _'mortal fool!'. _And proceed to excarnate you with their razor-like incisors. _Writer's block._

"You just- just had to remind me that it's back, didn't you?" he sobbed.

()(())()

"You," Roxas announced unceremoniously as he emptied a handful of cocktail nuts into his mouth, "are piss-drunk." He reached a salty hand towards the volume knob in Vexens' expensive audio system and turning it down, before casting the two conscious but completely wasted young men on the couch before him. One was his boyfriend. One wasn't, but evoked Roxas' good side still. Number two's self-made CD had been on full blast just before Roxas had, with all his philosophical, good Samaritan sanity, taken mercy on the neighbours and turned it down on the behalf of the two inebriated young men.

Every other person in the large living room was dead to the world, comatose beneath the brick-load of drunken sleep. It was fairly obvious that the best of the party had been milked from it hours before, but that didn't stop Axel from squeezing out the tiny remaining scraps, and apparently dragging an unsuspecting Demyx along with him on his quest. Roxas had a feeling that he was the only sober person in the general vicinity, and this alone was enough to make him feel a little responsible for the two older, but completely hapless men.

Axel, who tended to degenerate into a happy, sniggering little mess whenever he decided to fall into the pit of alcohol, gave a small giggle before agreeing, "Yup. Totally p'ssed-drunk. I- I mean piss-drunk." He fell inelegantly upon the dejected, light blue-grey couch, gazing at his boyfriend upside down and showing the sharp whites of his teeth with his drunken grin, "Roxxaas. Yew algays wet the w'rds right, _Rox_aass..."

Demyx, who appeared to be the more civilised drunk of the two of them, was still standing on two legs, but with obvious effort. Apparently the musician only got more verbose with the charms of alcohol, and the lack of inhibition only broke down the initial facade of a cheerful joker. So Demyx had little stages of piss-drunkenness: First stage, tipsy and bloody happy. Second stage, tipsier and suddenly cynical. Third stage, drunk, miserable and waxing on about filial piety, for whatever reason. Fourth stage, insert stream of question marks here; after seeing the dark, unclear look in Demyx's normally aquamarine eyes and hearing the morbid cynicism the musician spouted, Roxas decided that he did not want to know.

Somewhere beneath the joker, there appeared to be a neglected philosopher who had all the ideas and none of the words to express them. It was at this point that Roxas realised that as deep and arty-hippie as Marluxia could be, or as Nietzsche as he himself could wax, neither of them had anything on the existential issues that Demyx could raise with the coaxing of a little dry gin mixed with Carlsberg mixed with pineapples.

"Don't drawl my name," Roxas snapped before looking at Demyx worriedly. "You okay there?"

The musician gave a strange shudder, looking at the fellow crewmate like he'd just appeared before him out of hammer-space. "Yeah- uh," he murmured, largely dilated eyes not seeming to fix on anything in particular. "Just weird listening to my ini- inish- first tries at making mu... sic," he explained weakly in a husk of a voice.

The blond blinked, glancing to the stereo system and the higher, more boyish voice and amateurish chords of the guitar streaming from it. "You were good, even back then," he assured after a moment, before setting a skinny hand on Demyx's shoulder and pushing him down. "Come on, sit down; I said before, you're totally wasted."

Demyx's body complied with the energy of a sack of potatoes, and he fell like a house of cards and folded at the feet of the couch Axel was prostrate on. The redhead flailed a little at the motion, reaching up for Roxas and whining, "Hey, he gets touchy-feely, where's my touchy-feely?"

"None for you," snapped Roxas, smiling vaguely as he smacked away Axel's bony, fluttering hands, and sauntered away towards the open kitchen area. The dishes- and there were a _lot_of dishes- weren't going to do themselves.

He vaguely heard Axel mumbling to Demyx in the sad excuse of a conversation in the main room: _"Hey Dem, this's great CD by the wayy. Great with a- uh- capital… G."_

()(())()_  
_

Marluxia, in all his blatant _"I just threw on all my clothes after a nice long session of happy time with my boyfriend"_ glory, finally descended the strong wooden staircase at three in the morning and let his gaze travel over Vexen's spacious, once-immaculate living room. As if torn apart by war and burning balloons, the room was desecrated by scraps of finger food lying on the floor, limp remains of red balloons, and spilled beer bottles. After a few hours of extenuating, insane partying, most the _Final Limit_ crew was reduced to a pretty dead one. Sleeping figures huddled together, some still clutching beer bottles. Some of the sane, actually more sober members were packing up their belongings and saying parting words. After all the fun, the crew had crashed and burned.

Over by the speaker system, the slightly higher pitch of Demyx's teenage voice rang out in sweet, ardent notes, accompanied by the chords of an acoustic guitar. Marluxia vaguely recognised the tune as one of Demyx's high school productions, and one of his very first ever songs composed. It was amazing how such a personality could have made so many thousands of songs over the years, and so many _wonderful_ ones, yet there he lay, unsuccessful and silent, drinking and burdened and trying to forget the mountain of bills on the dining room back home.

The musician himself lay still, prostrate over the couch, nestling a bottle of beer. Marluxia frowned lightly- while Demyx normally abhorred beer, vodka and any alcohol for what they were worth, he sometimes tended to take to them when he was feeling tormented, or worse, nostalgic.

Also laying nearby was Axel, seemingly comfortable on the floor and drunkenly mumbling something to Demyx. Marluxia caught snatches of phrases: "_Damn man dis shit's good, 'course ya're gonna get this listn'd to, got that memorised? Memorised that, yeah..."_

A little uncomfortable, the playwright crossed the tiled floor of the room, leaning down and shaking the still Demyx. The musician's eyes were closed and his mouth lay open, breathing deeply in quiet snores. The only other sounds in the room were the clatter of Roxas, who was probably the only one (and the sane one) who hadn't partaken in any drink, in the kitchen, Axel mumbling to mostly nobody, and the CD in the speaker system. "Demyx, time to go," Marluxia chided, watching how the blond-brunette hair fell in limp locks over the young man's face. He noted dryly that after a sweaty, beer-soaked few hours of heavy partying, Demyx's commonly faithful mullet had flagged in its diligence and now fell dejectedly over his face in long, stringy locks. "Demyx, wake up."

"Uwargh...?" the young man stirred suddenly, swatting away at Marluxia's hand as he shifted out of place. Slowly some life was flooding back into his eyes, and he blinked as he looked around, wide-eyed and uncomprehending. "Where the heck're we?"

"Vexen's house, you twit." Extracting the bottle from Demyx's loose grip, he shook it and eyed it with a raised eyebrow when he saw that it was empty except for a tiny trickle at the bottom. "Oh dear; you're pretty wasted." With a grunt, he leaned down and wrapped a strong arm around Demyx's shoulders, lifting his flatmate to his feet with a little effort. Demyx made a small sound of protest, before succumbing to a strange fit of giggles. "What're you laughing at?" Marluxia asked gruffly as he flashed an apologetic smile Roxas' way, after the blond cast him a puzzled look from the kitchen.

"You," Demyx grinned drunkenly, wrapping his arms around his neck and reclining into his grip.

Vexen took the moment to come down the stairs, and give them both a puzzled half-glare before scanning over the room with a look of dispiteous disdain, leaning and picking up a piece of debris that looked like it may have been food at some point in its history. Glancing up at Marluxia in the mid-action of tossing it to a garbage bin, he asked, "How are you getting home?"

Marluxia smiled, wincing as his muscle strained a little to support his roommate. He was going to be sore, exhausted and depressed tomorrow, but the feeling had yet to set in; he wasn't exactly waiting for it. "The train service runs twenty four hours, love," he simpered, before grunting as Demyx made a lurching sound and keeled over. "Don't throw up on my boyfriend's floor, Dem. It's covered with enough garbage."

"'m not gonna," Demyx whined, eye twitching and voice even further garbled by his fingers over his mouth, "not gonna," he repeated redundantly, as if he was jinxing himself. Leaning over again, he hastily plucked a half-empty beer bottle off the ground; he didn't seem to care whose lips had been on the tip of the bottle previously, as he gave a long swig of it with verve.

Marluxia gave the bottle a look of disgust, snatching it from Demyx's grasp as soon as it left his mouth, looking at its label- Carslberg. Nose wrinkling, he handed the abject bottle to Vexen, ignoring the protests and weak flailing of Demyx.

"Uwgh- give it-"

"Let's go, Dem," Marluxia said, stumbling over to Vexen and quickly kissing him, muttering, "sorry about this," before retreating and struggled towards the door, pulling Demyx's arm firmer around his large shoulders. It was something he was thankful for that Demyx was actually around his height, or else towing the musician around like this would be more of a burden. "You're bloody heavy," Marluxia uttered with a touch of a grin, waving as Vexen closed the door behind them.

Demyx dragged his sneakers against the ground, worn sneakers colliding and pushing aside short brushes of grass. His narrowed eyes blinked and dilated at the sudden darkness of the outside garden-yard, before he threw his head up and wailed, "'m gonna die..."

Marluxia snorted, working one-handed to unlatch the intricately-decorated front gate. Vexen was the only one in the entire _Final Limit_ crew who actually owned a house on the overpopulated island, thus he was highly paranoid with his security system. Giving Demyx a strong shove forwards to bring them both walking out, he groused, "Nobody's dying on my watch. Don't be such a big baby; we've got work tomorrow."

This seemed to perk Demyx up a little, and as they tumbled together down the gravel road of the small neighbourhood of luxurious, he was quiet for a moment, before speaking up, "Marly?"

His roommate, who'd been appreciating the silence, growled, "What is it?"

"You 'ver somebody know-" Demyx paused, biting his tongue over his words. "Gah- ya ever know somebody, fall in love with 'em an' stuff, and put yer life all aroun' them?"

Marluxia's pink eyebrows knitted together quizzically and he glanced at the young man by his side, giving him a questioning look and finding that he looked perfectly serious- and smelled like beer. Turning away and taking a long breath, he said, "Maybe. When I was in high school, yes." He adjusted his arm around the white fabric of Demyx's shirt. "Why?"

Demyx looked indignant. "I'm no' f'nished," he recalcitrated, "also, you go and put your life 'round them, right? Right? So you're all de- dedi- devoted and stuff to them. And then... then, Marly, th'n they go- they go and change and you've screwed your life over for them and they're not the same- _it's not fair_! And damn it, 'm not putting this together right-"

The writer blinked repeatedly, blank-faced looking at the very much wasted musician. "You're putting it together fine, Demyx. You done?"

"Y-yeah, thah's my whole question. That crap happen to you?"

Marluxia smiled, though it wasn't a happy smile. As they passed beneath a streetlight down the deserted streets, his was illuminated and cast in the stark shadows of his messy fuchsia hair and the strong frame of his body. "I had my life revolve around somebody, but then _I _changed. And then we just couldn't be the same anymore, and I ran away, so I don't really think that's what you're talking about. Why are you asking me?"

The blond tripped over a rock, heaving and clenching around his roommate's shoulder. "...This guy. I like him, liked him, so much, yeah- but he's so hurt. So hurt, Marly. 'm so 'fraid now, he's not innocent or sweet anymore, he's so hurt and fragile and he can tumble down so fast, all I have to do is push him. I- put my- guh-" he bit his lip, looking around, "this sound so dumb, damn, 'm revolving my life 'round a beautiful glass angel. There, 'said it. Gah," he momentarily pulled away, blinking rapidly and making the motions of throwing up, obviously dizzy. He fell backwards, elbows grazing against the gravel as he tumbled and rolled to his side. "...Feel sick."

Marluxia concernedly peered over at him. "Dem? You..." he trailed off, hands on his jeans as he leaned down and patiently waited. _Little Demmy's growing up..._ flitted through his head, and he pushed away the thought as soon as it came.

The musician gave a discomforted noise, stretching out onto the grass just outside of the gate of a house. "Don't have anything to pukkee," he moaned.

His roommate gave a heavy, morbid chuckle, leaning over and brushing the blond locks out of Demyx's face before grabbing his arm and pulling for him to get back up. He had a feeling that Demyx had just told him something among the lines of a secret; it was something that made him a little thrilled and guilty to know at the very same time. Silently resolving to keep the secret, he laughed again and gave a shove Demyx's way, pushing them both into the motion of walking.

"Man, I said you weren't going to die under my watch, but I'm not so sure about _tomorrow._"

_**End of chapter seven**_

_**

* * *

**_

_**A/N: Yay! This story is a bit like inconsistent formatting hell right now- big apologies for that, but as soon as I can I'll try and get around to smoothing out all the errors and wrinkles in all the previous chapters.  
I'm sorry, this chapter was more or less a breather from the drama left and right, so I think nothing really horribly memorable happened... But hopefully you found it all right? I'm sure you all know what I'm getting at already, but.. I still love them reviews. :) Thanks for reading!  
**_


	9. Chapter 9

_**A/N: Hi, all! How's it going? (Me, I'm fine, though I'm not sure I've been thinking the same since that headshot I took from that dang basketball, haha...)****  
I got to say this for you guys: 'Scripted' is like a baby to me. In all the screaming, wailing-but-I-love-it-anyway-way. In the way that kids sometimes really don't grow up the way you intend them to and if you try and keep 'em in a shell they'll break out and give ya the shocker of your life. And no, I'm not making some sort of obscure reference. I'm just saying: writing, handling this fic is awesome and has exceeded any expectations I had jotted down for it, and sometimes it gets overwhelming.**_

_**Not saying I haven't stopped writing forever, but my final-final-finals (triple finals 'cuz they're the finals of the academic year and that's such special business..) are being a back-breaking brickload of anxiety that I didn't even anticipate to be so bad back when I started taking on 'Scripted' as a project. I've got some chapters in stock, so I can update sparingly for you guys, but it's hard mediating between sitting down and writing 'Scripted' and freaking out over whether I'll make it out of this school year alive.**_

_**tl;dr Please bear with me (and my post-midterms freakoutishness) if my updates run this race like tortoises. Ehehe...**_

_**Love and cookies to Besieged . Infection for her great job beta-reading, once more.  
**_

_**Review responses:  
luckless-is-me: **Aw, yeah. Sorry for the absence of Zexion! And I too found myself amused at how drunk Axel wrote himself out to be, haha.  
**JJKMagic: **Drunk people can be fun and depressing at the same time, but since I don't get the opportunity to hang out with them too often (no rly) I really had to draw a lot from spare memories to try and write out all the inebriation of chappy seven, so.. haha. Glad to see it seems like Demyx wasn't teetering on that fearful elastic line of 'suspension of belief' too much.  
**AccerberRider: **No, I appreciate any pointing out of errors I may have in my chappies. I gotta keep track of them for that fateful day that I get out my shears and clean up 'Scripted' and re-up the old, fixed chapters. : ) And we'll see about Marly helping him.. though you might want to worry a bit about Marly, too.  
**PinappleDuck:** Well.. when you get down to it... pretty much anybody needs their fill of psychological help... No, I'm kidding. And srs, it's only an opinion of Axel's that Marluxia wears panties at all... but who can tell...?_

_**Thanks for the reviews and enjoy the chapter!**_

_**Chapter Eight**_

Demyx's groan of anguish was long, drawn-out, and miserable as he lay stretched out and face-down over the backseat of Vexen's car, wrinkled, thrown-on clothes barely covering his lanky body. His knees bent at awkward angles, too long for the confined spaces.

Painkillers- on all the agonising, hung over morning-afters for them to suddenly discover that they had run out of painkillers! "Uwaaaah," was pretty much the only form of verbal communication that he was capable of, in his own headache-induced state of mind-vomit.

Marluxia had once verbosely expatiated to him on the wondrous neuropsychological effects of hangovers on the young male, and only snatches of phrases (like _"basically feels like the slow, dragged-out process of dying of dehydration in the desert, except you don't tend to actually die, so it's like your body's messed up way of saying 'just kidding!'") _ran through his head as he groaned into the soft fabric of the seat.

"You're spreading your germs into my backseat," Vexen said in an uncharacteristic sprightly voice as he made a turn, driving with one hand and squeezing Marluxia's hand in the other, eyes never leaving the road. The cheerful notes of Pachebel strung through the expensive car speakers, hardly synchronised with the throbs of pain that shot through Demyx's head.

"It's not my fault..." he murmured, attempting to bring himself up, maybe actually sit up like a normal human, and failing.

Marluxia, looking decidedly melancholy as he watched the scenery through the tinted glass, was a limp form against the shotgun seat. "Do you remember anything from last night?"

Demyx froze. Well, not really, of course he didn't- aside from the fuzzy image of handing Axel the record of his old music, or asking where Zexion was and hearing that he wasn't "exactly a party person", his wasted brain hadn't taken the consideration to record much of the events last night. "Oh God, Marly, you can't mean anything by that- oh God, don't tell me I did something stupid like use a beer bottle the wrong way-"

"I wasn't there, I was upstairs, I wouldn't know," Marluxia said in a level, hushed voice, "but as far as I know, it didn't get that bad. You were just binging beer, sleeping... Axel was drunkenly sputtering to you too, while he listened to your old music, then I came to tell you we had to leave."

The musician bit his lip. "Guh... that's not any better." Rolling on his side, he suspiciously gazed at the back of his roommate and the scientist's heads. "How come you two aren't hung over to high heaven, anyway?" he whined. "What were you doing last night?"

"What, aside from trying to forget how awful a writer I am because I can hardly grind out a word at the pinnacle of my very first play?" Marluxia quirked an eyebrow, turning to him and smiling wanly, "oh, we were _exercising_."

Demyx gagged.

The car came to a rolling halt, and Vexen, leisurely undoing his seatbelt, called to the half-corpse in his backseat, "We're here. Muster some sort of self-respect for your miserable self and get up." The dirty-blond-haired scientist sighed as he glanced outside, before reaching a small ribbon from his pocket and loosely wrapping his long hair into a clumsy ponytail. "Despicably hot weather, for the rainy season," he commented as he latched open his door and clambered out.

"Just another reason not to get out of the car," Demyx moaned.

Marluxia sighed resignedly, reaching over towards his flatmate and shaking him limply. "Come on. I'm depressed as it is, and you're being a failure of a cheerful person."

The musician sighed, tiredly grabbing at the strap of his sitar case and reaching for the door. "Fine..." he said as he struggled to get up and out of the car. Partially he was motivated by Marluxia's tired desperation, but another part wanted to get out and find Zexion, maybe pull him into a hug after a rough, long weekend. He had actually found himself daydreaming about getting admonished by the shorter actor, getting told to prepare the music, just listening to his voice-

Marluxia frowned as he watched the musician clamber out of the car, before following himself. Even as he was instantly assaulted by the harsh glares of the naked sun casting waves of heat down upon the exposed earth, even as he winced and shielded his eyes, he kept his gaze on Demyx. Marluxia was a man naturally in touch with feelings, knowing well how to use them to project into his characters and all their romantic conflicts, so he could detect the strange _off-ness_ of the musician's demeanour in the last weekend. For once, Demyx was looking forward to something, and the pink-haired man knew it probably was completely (or at least mostly) unrelated to the musician's strange phone conversation two days before. No, Demyx was happy.

What was there to be happy for? He couldn't help but tie it with their conversation the night before- he'd ask Demyx about it further, but the musician had been drunk and lacking judgement; perhaps the whole matter was something he sought privacy for, for the time being.

He looked at his flatmate- Demyx was cringing at the humid heat wave that struck him, so far in contrast to the frigid, dry air of Vexen's air-conditioned car.

"W-whoa, weather got P.M.S. much?" he muttered as he strapped on his sitar case and proceeded to pad against the gravel with his worn, once-grey sneakers and head towards the aged theatre.

It was a boring-looking building from the outside, without even a signboard to indicate its purpose, large, built like large rectangular bricks in shape and looking unpainted in all its grey, concrete glory. The spent-looking palm trees that surrounded it, and the shuddery whispers of the emaciated sea breeze that cast through the mostly motionless area only made the place look more blindingly depressing.

Marluxia felt a sad twinge in his heart as he looked at the humble imposition that the theatre was. That secluded building saddled all his hopes, and even it in all its meek inappropriateness could at least serve its purpose, but what of himself? He couldn't even _write _his dream. Writing novels had never been as difficult as a play. His gaze drooped.

The next moment, Vexen's hand twined around his, and the scientist was pulling him towards the building with an impatient look on his face. Demyx followed the two, mumbling all the while about the starkly _"gah, it's like the clouds turned from emotastic Edgar Allan Poe thunderstorms into El Nino's harem overnight, man!"_ weather and talking about how he hoped the theatre had a better air-conditioning system than Vexen's car.

()(())()

It went without saying that Demyx had put up with a lot of crap in his life. Most of it, he'd taken when he was a kid, without a word of objection or a question about why it was so unfair in the first place. Like the time when his father had actually chucked his first sitar into the nearby Taoist temple incinerator and told him to focus on his studies, Demyx shut up and went to focus on his studies and only asked for another sitar a year later. Now that he was an adult, he practised his freedom of speech in private, mostly in rant exchanges with Marluxia about the awful God-awfulness of life, but when faced with the unfair calamities themselves, he would remain (mostly) quiet and take it meekly. Like all the million times he got told off for trying to endorse his music.

But this? He had to whine about this.

Xemnas stood on the stage, wearing a button-up, short-sleeved and colourful casual aloha shirt and a pair of thankfully knee-length shorts, arms crossed and with a borderline malicious smile on his face. His long, tied-back locks of silver hair were pushed back further by the pair of sunglasses over his brow. He looked the proper tourist for the obscenely tropical weather that breezed in over the island, with the blunt pages of script in his hands sticking out in the image of 'ignorant tourist' quite starkly.

The director took a moment to absorb the stares he garnered, smugly. "Zexion is unable to join us for rehearsal today, so I shall be taking his place momentarily," he explained to the flabbergasted cast and crew, all the while taking momentary sips of ice tea that Saïx emotionlessly held out to him. It may be noted that while Xemnas was nicely decked-up for the tropical heat wave, his husband was dressed as always in his dreary ensemble of dull colours.

"What is this, I don't even-" Marluxia began, astonished, louder and more energetic than ever, only to be stayed by Xemnas' hand. The playwright, worn-looking shirt and hoodie and old jeans and all, stood just by the front line of the stage, gaping at the tan-skinned man openly. Then, his shocked expression shifted to one of vehemence, "Xemnas! Where is my lead actor?" he demanded, gesturing accusingly at the actual director.

Xemnas' thin lips smiled idyllically and he took the full bottle of ice tea his husband handed him, shrugging. "I do believe he's on a trip out of town."

Marluxia looked like a kicked puppy, so betrayed and pathetic that at that moment it looked like he could collapse into heart-wrenching sobs.

Demyx, however, wasn't really paying attention to how his flatmate looked, because he himself was sputtering some forms of futile objections to the state of things. "What?" he cried out from the audience seating area, wildly attempting to gesticulate just _how_ he felt but failing because his bulky sitar case restricted aplenty of his movement. "But _why?"_ Just last Friday, he'd taken that same actor in his arms, hugged him, and they'd made up, but- it didn't feel fair that Zexion should just leave town suddenly without making him aware of it.

Xemnas shrugged. "One would suppose," he said in his painfully droning voice, seeming happy to hear it absorbed by the mediocre acoustics of the theatre, "that the youth requires some form of repose after his momentarily lapse in professionalism in his acting last Friday."

The theatre was silent. Well, nobody could argue with _that._

Demyx, a little puzzled, looked over the _Final Limit_ crew: Axel, a few seats away, was nursing an ice pack to his head and wearing an unbuttoned shirt splayed with lurid graffiti-esque patterns, and getting scolded by a completely un-hung over Roxas. Luxord, who had been delicate with the volume of beer partaken the night before, looked nothing but a little dishevelled. Saïx had not been at the party, but he looked happy enough to not have a sleepy actor to mother hen after. Naminé looked like a shrivelled, sad, wet hamster, looking slightly ill and hair looking more thready and dead than usual, and the rest of the younger members weren't present- probably preoccupied with their classes, work, and the general gears of life.

Saïx, giving them all a disapproving look, took the moment to speak for the first time, "Is this crew ever _presentable? _Get to work, you sad beings."

Feeling resentful, Demyx sighed and undid his case strap. "Sure," he mumbled, biting his lip and looking up at Xemnas.

Xemnas' amber eyes were staring right back at him, and when their eyes met Demyx felt a shiver crawl up his skin. It was always unnerving to be analysed by someone- when Zexion stared through him appraisingly, he had felt a small tingle of unnerving pleasure that the actor was looking at him, but when it was Xemnas' scrutinising gaze it was a wholly different, scarier matter altogether. Dude, he was married to _Saïx. _How they got along was beyond him; in fact, it was on a level of scary beyond Demyx's meek imagination. They were a good couple in a creepy way- sort of in the way that Spiderman and Venom were compatible- wrong and creepy and fitting way too well.

...Ew, Spiderman and Venom.

"We shall begin the day with a full rehearsal," Xemnas said in his amazingly low, rather soporific tone, ignoring the uprising of groans elicited by his words.

Marluxia, standing among the complaining masses, looked amazed. "What?" he whispered, "you don't even want to..." he paused, looking up at the director with wide eyes. "You don't even want to look at the script? Revise it- or something?" he asked, tentatively holding his trembling hands to his chest as if it was all a dream he was to wake from.

Xemnas looked at him blankly, before carelessly taking a swig of ice tea and handing it back to an impassive Saïx. "Why would I need to?"

The pink-haired man looked ready to faint from thankfulness. Smiling weakly, he chuckled, "Oh... no reason."

()(())()

Roxas felt a little sweaty with nervousness, feeling the loose fabric of his pants slide against his legs with about as much tenderness as a cheese grater. Roxas noted to himself quite duly, always wash- and maybe beat thoroughly- a new pair of pants before you go to a full rehearsal with the director standing in as the main character. He actually wished Zexion was there on stage, but the blue-grey-haired man probably wasn't about to show up just because some suffering student wished he would.

_"Ah- the taste of freedom. I can only long for it,"_ he exclaimed belatedly after a quiet beat, seeing the expressions of everyone fixed on him. He never did get used to the long, heavy silence that fell after rehearsal started- to this moment it made him nervous. He anticipated the moment of Axel's cue, where the redhead was supposed to start playing the guitar- just the beats of a song kept Roxas in rhythm a thousand times better than this kind of silence.

Right- oh God, he had another line.

_ "This island-" _his shoulders stooped with disappointment as he took a step forward, admiring the imaginary scenery of an island surrounding him, _"is a beauty that confines me."_ He took a breath and closed his eyes for a moment, glad to see his lines were over. He glanced over to the stage for a moment, meeting Axel's vibrant green eyes, thankful to see that the redhead was watching him with a satisfied expression.

Roxas had originally turned to theatre at the urging of this friends, out of the sheer kindness of heart (and exasperation at seeing Naminé's pouting face every time he entered the Art Appreciation classroom). Because, naturally, Roxas was a pacific, emo philosopher, but generally good Samaritan- and yes, all of those labels had been plastered on his self by a certain redhead boyfriend.

When Axel wasn't being an annoying, labelling, somewhat war-mongering jerk, he was being supportive and sweet. Well, sometimes- but most of the time he was just being an annoying (addictive), labelling (honest), somewhat war-mongering (charming) jerk (albeit a hot jerk). With heaven furtively planted in a little spot located between the wide girth of his hips, below the small, shapely contours of his waist that Roxas wanted to plot in calculus-

But this wasn't about Axel, or the miniature, shapely heaven he sidled between the girth of his hips, or even about his somehow charming war-mongering with some other members in the cast and crew. At the moment, large sneakers planted on the wooden floor of the stage, Roxas' somewhat derailed train of rushing thoughts of any wide-hipped guitarist boyfriends were mostly squashed by the weight of anxiety. The weight of anxiety, and the immensely heavy voice of Xemnas unsuitably pretending to be a cheerful teenager.

_"What's got you down?"_ came a low, powerful voice from off-stage, a hundred percent Xemnas' voice all except for the friendliness. The friendliness was a scary bonus that Roxas actually never _wanted_ to hear off the large arena of a stage. Xemnas emerged from behind the folds of curtains, standing on the exposed fourth of the stage with an excusable few sheets of script fluttering under his grasp every few seconds. Gliding over to where Roxas was, he gave a quick look to his lines before continuing, _"it's not like you'll ever get off this island anyway."_

Roxas' spine gave an intempestive quiver. With the grind of his teeth, he prevented his lips from upturning in a nervous grin- Xemnas being friendly, even in an act, was so unsettling that the grin Roxas was fighting back was a scared one more than anything. _"W-well-" _he stammered, struggling to put on his character, _"Well... uh..."_ He gave a repressed little giggle of a laugh, afraid, as he wrapped his arms around his body. "With all due respect, Xemnas, you playing this role is... really, really, really... scary."

Xemnas was indeed an actor, because he managed to pull off the expression that one makes looking good-naturedly offended, surprised, amused, and a touch homicidal all at once.

()(())()

It was pretty obvious to say that it was completely wrong seeing Xemnas acting in Zexion's stead, saying all his lines with all the same professional confidence, but so much taller and imposing. It became instantly obvious that Xemnas was, indeed, a professional, awe-aspiring actor, but he was so prominent and commanding that he seemed very ill-fitted for the role, versus Zexion's quiet, subtle string-pulling method of control over the stage and characters.

Demyx hit about twenty off notes simply from being distracted by the sound of Xemnas, well, _singing. _The sympathetic look Axel gave him proved to him that nobody could really blame him. But any mistakes the musician would have made during the full rehearsal were either ignored or not noticed by Xemnas- at least, any comment the director may have made was lost among the sea of lava of 'connoisseur-level critique' that he had for the actual actors.

Xemnas was not a blunt, out-right torture master at rehearsal-directing. No, he took his authority for granted too far to be so _direct_ about it; instead he was a chess-master, masterfully bringing about the consequences that he desired through careful, practiced and skilful motions and actions.

In other words, he was a subtle, manipulative bastard. And a happy one at that, because in all its awkward amateur performing power, the little, meek crew of the _Final Limit_ play production was actually a really good one, the archetype of unrecognised, unprofessional raw talent. Certainly these crew members had dabbled in the world of entertainment before.

But talented and semi-experienced with their art as they all were, this was their big break. This was probably about as high as they were going to get in the scrabbling, lying, cheating and harsh Amazon jungle that was the hierarchy of the entertainment industry. The crew would finish their small dabble in performance-arts bungee-jumping, enjoy it, and then back off. They would be satisfied and go on with their lives, forever unknowing of the dark crevasses of the art they'd once played with.

Touch the tip of the iceberg and be happy.

Xemnas, being rich in money, and being a man who, with all his money, had plenty of time, decided to pitch in a margin of his time and effort to manipulate this crew towards at least one success that they could remember in their lives. He even dragged his husband and the professional actor his husband worked under into the mess (with some persuasion), knowing that their involvement could steer this amateurish work called _Final Limit_ towards Xemnas' goal: Good recognition, some claps, sold rights to the script and production, happy faces everywhere.

And of course some money and a very good name for himself.

Of course Saïx and Zexion would help once their names were tied to _Final Limit_: Zexion had a clean record of a career that stretched back for years, which he had glorified with trophies of obscenely successful plays he'd participated in. His successful, long filmography and work ethic screamed '_obsession!'_. The sleep disorders could be overlooked, if only because stage performances were a night affair when he worked best, and he had yet to fall asleep mid-performance.

As for Saïx, well, Xemnas knew _every inch _of his husband, and you can take statement that whatever way you like.

And once Xemnas had gotten his manipulative, dastardly rehearsal-directing done for the morning, cut through the awkwardness of acting in the stead of the absent Zexion, and had moderately slaved the crew towards some semblance of a good performance, he was satisfied enough to give everyone thirty minutes of break. Break, of course, meant an awkward procession of people sitting in random corners of the theatre, nibbling tensely at their lunches and peering in Xemnas' like frightened mice.

Marluxia had reclined upon the front rows, body splayed uncomfortably over the armrests, and covered his eyes with the pencilled paper of his chapter notes, Vexen sitting just beside him and poring over a book- Darwin, it seemed,- so Xemnas mentally crossed out the idea of discussing the script with the play's writer. The rest of the crew was anxiously eating in separate corners. Saïx had disappeared backstage, seemingly busying himself with something.

Without Saïx to be entertained with, Xemnas decided to take a fun alternative: intimidate the tyro.

Said tyro musician was found sitting in the musician zone just below the stage, glancing over a sheet of worn-looking paper and furtively playing a sketchy-sounding melody on the piano. Apparently he was fixing up a climatic song for Naminé's character- the song she was due to play just before her character leaped into pursuit of the protagonist. The blond was so absorbed in his work that he hardly noticed Xemnas saunter up directly behind him, curiously reading the track-list of AC/DC songs on the back of his black shirt.

"I don't believe I recall your name," the director stated finally.

The blond made an "eep!" sound, jumping at Xemnas' voice, before collapsing into nervous chuckles when he realised who'd snuck up on him. "It's Dem- Demyx," he stuttered, twisting around to look at the man better. He looked like he _wanted _nothing better than to scream and run away, arms flailing, but he was in too much hung over pain for it. "S-something you need?"

"...Demyx," Xemnas enunciated thoughtfully, crossing his arms over his colourful tourist shirt, "you are head musician, yes?"

The startled blond nodded rigidly, aquamarine eyes wide and lips trembling. Xemnas could read his expression, and it basically said: _'Oh, Lord, take me here and now and spare me of this-'._ "D-did I do something wrong?" he asked, guardedly bringing his hands up in surrender and leaning away from the garishly-clad director. "I-I mean, well, now I'm _sure_ I've _done_ something wrong, but is it anything I can, I dunno, take care of? Give you some kinda- some kinda-"

In a sweeping motion, Xemnas plucked the sheet music from the piano stand, perusing it with a refined, thoughtful expression. Well, the refined, thoughtful expression was there, the perusing not so much- he hardly looked at it, but it functioned as a good prop to look distinguished as he intimidated the youth. "I meant... to discuss the lights effects with you. It shall not do to have the performance proceed without some... flair," he explained as he reached the end of the thin sheets, dully looking up at the musician.

Demyx's eyes were still wide, and a little watery from remaining open. He looked like the idea of lighting and special effects hadn't even occurred to him until that moment. Weakly he cleared his throat. "Oh."

Xemnas smiled, not very understandingly or kindly, but gracing the poor neophyte with the sight of his sharp teeth nonetheless. "I understand. It is surprising though..." he pondered, raising his hand to his chin thoughtfully, cocking his head to the side, "for you to be a newcomer, yet Zexion couldn't seem to take his eyes off of you. I've seldom seen him so unnerved."

He was lying. He'd _never_ seen Zexion flunk up so badly on stage, _ever. _And neither had anyone else for all that matter, but Demyx didn't know that.

The blond stiffened, looking back at him like cornered prey. "You're not close to Zexion or anything," he spoke, "maybe he's just... tired."

Xemnas nodded in feigned agreeability. "You are correct... He is tired. He's tired of acting and everything that entails it. Why do you suppose he's hanging around Marluxia and the script so much instead of practicing his pronunciation and honing his voice? He doesn't even like to act."

Demyx squinted. "And... uh, who are you to talk?"

The director smiled. How intriguing- the musician flinches away for himself and suddenly gets brave for someone else- and Zexion of all people. The actor who was rigid, calculating and icy enough for two people, let alone himself. "I am Xemnas," he said simply and proudly, as if it was the golden explanation to a forty-mark question. "Come now, I simply want to discuss the lights effects with you."

"You're the one who brought in Zexion," Demyx muttered, pulling the sheaves of paper out of Xemnas' hands and huffing as he went through them, only succeeding in messing the order up more.

He looked ready to say something else, something perhaps a little more meek and tame, and shift back into his more reluctant demeanour, but whatever words left his mouth were muted by the raucous slamming of the front theatre door.

Xemnas of all people knew that the front theatre door could make a _spectacularly_ hateful explosion of a noise if someone put a little effort to slam it, and a small tick of irritation swung through in him when he realised that someone _else_ liked using his trademarked deafening entrance.

Turning away from the blond, mullet-donning musician, he raised narrowed eyes towards the entrance, sight catching a shock of platinum-blond hair.

"I'm _here_, bitches!" a high, laughing female voice rang out in the theatre.

()(())()

Demyx, who'd been in the middle of the stupid sheet music in its _correct _order, and trying to get away from the blinding sight of Xemnas in shorts, was caught so off-guard by the slamming noise that he nearly dropped his papers. Apparently, the rest of the crew was a little shocked too- Axel, who'd just tumbled out of the backstage area grinning like an idiot with a refilled ice pack over his sad-looking head of messy red hair, proceeded to look utterly confused as he looked up at the people standing at the entrance area. Marluxia, who'd chosen the best of moments to grumble and sit up, had frozen in the middle of stretching and looked at them in horror.

Demyx's heart skipped a beat when he saw among them, Zexion stood at the top of the stairs, sour-faced and with a woman's arm locked around his neck, keeping him stuck there, fit quite well. The woman herself was hardly very tall, with short platinum-blond hair and overly-casual, faded street clothes. The _hulk_ of a man standing behind them both was about twice either of their height, dressed like a businessman, and solemn-faced.

Waving awkwardly at Zexion, who didn't seem to yet notice him, Demyx's eyes trailed upwards, towards the woman who'd so harshly kept the poor actor in a merciless grip- and Demyx's jaw dropped.

"Larxene?" he cried out, this time really dropping his sheet music as he stood up, bouncing away from Xemnas and tumbling upwards towards the strange trio. "Larxene, what the hell?" he shouted in surprise.

Of the three people standing on the platform-like entrance area, Demyx knew two.  
One, he had something of a confused crush-admiration-friendship with. Male, somewhere in his early twenties, occupation, actor. Name, Ienzo Ishida. Preferred name, Zexion.  
Two, he had something of a blood (in both the familial way and the bloody way) relation with. Female, somewhere in her early twenties, occupation, Queen of the dark, creeping, flaming regions of Hell. Better known for being an electrician. Name, Queen of Hell. Preferred name, Larxene.

Larxene looked just as surprised, even to the point of loosening her playful grip around Zexion. The actor took the opportunity to slip out of it, straightening, flustered, and looking between Demyx and Larxene with a visible wide eye. "Do you to know each other?"

The blond woman just grinned widely, shoving at the actor before stifling a bit of a giggle. "Hell yeah, shorty-" (Demyx choked in the sheer disbelief of what he had just heard-) "we're cousins," she said, seizing Zexion by the neck with one palm and the cheek with the other and drawing his uncovered forehead close to her lips, planting a kiss on it.

Both Demyx and Zexion froze, Demyx staring at the actor with wide, questioning eyes and Zexion blinking back, face an open blank. "Larxene," Zexion finally said, squirming away and inching back towards the muscular man Demyx didn't know, "don't touch me," in a simple, blink-and-you-miss-it borderline-murderous tone.

Larxene's eyes narrowed a little, but then she shrugged it off, looking back at Demyx. "Hoi, Myde- haven't seen you in the last decade or something," she laughed, "where'd you disappear to?"

Zexion echoed, "Myde?"

Demyx's expression dropped to a frown, glancing between the two, and then giving the muscular man a furtive look, a little scared to look him in the eye. "Uh, Larxene..." he began, hushed, "I'm called Demyx now."

The blond woman stuck her arms akimbo, taking a sniff of the somewhat stale theatre air and giving him a puzzled look. And then, like she suddenly understood everything, she sighed and smiled, "Heh, you finicky little boys," touching her head with her hand and shaking it mockingly. Demyx smiled weakly; Larxene was a bit... well, undescribable beyond the title 'Queen of Hell', which she'd earned at the tender age of eleven after something of a massacre of both innocence and morality, but the better thing about her was that she tended to _get_ people like that.

...Well, sometimes it was a good thing.

Marluxia suddenly intervened, warily flinching away from Larxene when she acknowledged his presence with a bright wink, "I don't understand," he said breathlessly, ignoring Zexion for the while, "you're related? You two? But- your names, and-"

"My mother's sister," Larxene dismissed the topic with the flick of a light-fleshed hand, "Marluxia... been a while," she purred, winking her deep green eyes once more. Somewhere in the background, Axel made a 'yuck' sound, seeming to make a good point of disappearing behind a seat with Roxas. Demyx looked at Larxene and the rest of the theatre, uncomprehending how her presence suddenly made everyone wary, disgusted and a little... scared.

The pink-haired man cringed. "Just... go do your job," he muttered, fixing his gaze on the shorter actor, "and you," he growled. He obviously was working hard to not snarl loudly, especially with his thick, heavy voice. Obviously the playwright was suffering some sort of delayed onset of bodily aching; nothing Demyx really wanted to think about. "You, Zexion. I thought you were taking the day off? With your recent performance, you need it."

"Lexaeus persuaded me to come back early and assist the crew," Zexion intoned softly, offhandedly, before looking at Demyx, if only for a split of a second, and then turning to his large friend. "Thank you for the ride, Lexaeus. It was kind of you to bring Larxene and me here."

Demyx blinked. "You and Larxene went together? Larxene- what are you _doing_ here anyway?" he asked. The last time he'd even seen her was about two years ago, at some large-scale family party, and here she was showing her neat head of platinum-blond hair in the _Final Limit _production?

"Yeah, we came together. Lex was so sweet, picking me up when my bike broke down-"

"What happened to your bike?"

"Cloud borrowed it. You know how he curses bikes with his presence like that. Let me talk, damn it," Larxene snapped waspishly, with the air of a rather excited woman trying to get a word into an uptight conversation. "Look, I called up Zexion here and he was so _sweet _as to give me a ride to my workplace- I'm only showing up cuz _Xemmy_ called." She froze, realising that Xemnas was just a ways off, still by the piano and looking at her intently. "Uh, right, I mean Xemnas."

Marluxia was still cringing away from her, seemingly repulsed or scared or something. "Just- talk to Demyx about the play-" Marluxia grunted haltingly, turning on his heel all of a sudden and sauntering away in a weak shuddering manner.

Demyx looked after him. "What's up with him?" he wondered aloud, before turning to smile weakly at Zexion. "Hey."

The actor gazed back at him emptily, "Hello, Demyx." He looked like he was hiding something behind that expression, but it was so expertly concealed that Demyx was more than oblivious.

Larxene intervened before Demyx could get another word out, loudly clearing her throat, "A-hem." With a stretching motion of the arm, she pulled back the drooping half-reaching sleeves of her thin-looking, light yellow tee-shirt, and dropped her arm.

Effectively grabbing Demyx's attention, she smacked both hands to his angled cheeks, turning his head towards her and smiling in satisfaction, "I'm a professional electrical contractor, and for this play I'm the special effects and electronics technician, teamed up with Axel. Blah dee-blah blah. In other words, Axel and I are in charge of the sparkly shit that's supposed to go around the actors. Nobody gives us any credit, we never show up on stages ourselves, stuck on the behind balcony nobody notices, but hey, that's Good Samaritan crap. Damn, I can't talk with Lexaeus standing behind me, sorry," she laughed, looking up at the man who was seemingly called Lexaeus, hands still not leaving Demyx's cheeks. They were starting to have an unhealthy elastic feeling.

Zexion looked like he wanted to speak up, maybe go a little out of his way to smack the blond woman's hands away from Demyx's face. "Larxene, I need to speak to Demy-"

Pointedly she ignored him, cooing back to Demyx, "So, 'coz, what do you say you tell me what the heck _you've_ been up to and why you've shown up in my life all of a sudden? Didn't think you were the type to hang out with the half-assed _Final Limit_ crew..."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Marluxia interjected indignantly, and was pointedly ignored.

Demyx made an uncomfortable noise, feeling her small, skilled fingers digging into his skin. Raising his hands to push her away, he smiled, unnerved, and backed into the whitewashed theatre wall, sneakers making soft padded noises against the mildewed carpet floor. It made him uncomfortable not only to be so close to his apparently infamous cousin, but just the way she was behaving, and the fact that she was so open about doing it in front of the _entire freaking crew. _It felt like she'd just as well ripped off his jeans and showed the world his bright blue boxers. He looked to the nearby actor for help...

And Zexion looked a mild level of outraged, glaring a hole one of the stray locks Larxene had stroked back in her hair. "Larxene," the actor seethed, using his pronounced, thespian voice that Demyx only ever heard when he was reciting. "If you could please have some _etiquette,_ I want to introduce Demyx to Lexaeus."

"Huh?" Larxene stopped in the middle of reaching for Demyx again, gaze turning to stare at Zexion peculiarly. "Fine," she huffed, waving a hand and turning on a high boot-heel, giving Demyx a final look, "talk to you later, coz, after Zexy here's done snogging," she said in a grumble as she sauntered off. "Use a condom, Demmy."

Zexion looked almost relieved to watch her slowly descend the theatre stairs, seeming to head off to bother a very unhappy-looking Axel and ruffling Roxas' hair. "She doesn't know anything," the actor clarified quietly as soon as she was out of earshot, "she's merely... that way. But I suppose you would know."

"Yeah... I do," Demyx chuckled- Larxene was cool, even nice on a better day, but he couldn't say he had the sweetest memories of her. Turning to the much taller, brown-haired man who had been patiently standing behind Zexion all that time, he laughed awkwardly, raising a hand, "Uh, hi. Demyx's the name- we haven't met, have we?" he grinned. Sure the guy scared him with his size, but that wasn't a reason for Demyx to forget his manners- especially if this guy seemed to be Zexion's friend.

Even though it did catch his mind, and he wondered how these two seemed to be friends to begin with. It was mostly a physical thing, Zexion wearing platform boots and still only coming up a little shorter than Demyx himself, and this guy towering over him. Maybe he was a bodyguard?

Politely the man extended his own, shaking Demyx's hand with more gentleness than the musician was expecting- it was as if, if the man actually really held his hand and shook it, his arm would pop right off his socket. "My name is Lexaeus," he said, voice seeming to make the very walls of the theatre shake with its brilliant _vibrato_ effect. "Zexion has told me much about you."

Demyx didn't ever like hearing somebody tell him that they'd heard a lot about him- it always made him embarrassed- but the unobtrusive tone of the man seemed to put him at ease, even with those words. "Zexion talks about me?" he laughed, sideways-glancing at the actor; Zexion was looking at him, standing still and coolly as always, though shuffling his feet a bit. It was difficult to imagine what Zexion would have to say about him.

Lexaeus' expression didn't change, but he didn't look ill-meaning in the way that his dark eyes peered straight into Demyx's whenever they looked at each other. Like he was staring into Demyx's psyche and tearing it apart- the musician quickly realised that this tall guy had a lot more in common with Zexion than he looked, and all of a sudden it didn't strike him as strange that they were friends. At all. "Quite often," he said levelly.

Zexion took the moment to add, "Lexaeus and I have been friends since childhood. He... knows everything," he elaborated discretely, seeming to understand just as well as Demyx that their interaction the Friday before was a sacred thing that wasn't to be mentioned too brashly. Demyx smiled at him appreciatively.

The shorter young man opened his mouth again to speak, but was interrupted by the _whooshing_ sound of Xemnas abruptly materialising behind him, looking pleased. "Zexion," the director began in an imarcescibly fulsome voice, "so pleased to see you back. If I may draw you in for a discussion..."

"I'm not-"

If it weren't for the endearing aloha shirt, Xemnas may have looked almost like a salivating predator with fangs bared and claws drawn and digging into Zexion's frozen shoulder. "Zexion, I do believe I'm quite concerned about this play's progress, henceforth I would like to discuss it..."

And thus the actor was dragged away, looking quite unwilling but waving reluctantly as he was spirited away by the scarily enthusiastic-looking Xemnas. And they set course for the nearby grouchy Marluxia, with Xemnas no doubt readying himself to taking a razor to the playwright's script in Zexion's reluctant presence.

Lexaeus gazed after the scene, "This is quite the production. Zexion wants nothing more than its success."

He said the words in the precious, unconscious way that men of few words speak when they actually speak more than a sentence.

Demyx nodded. "I know," he said.

"But it is not acting that he wants," Lexaeus continued, calmly turning his attention back to the blond, the muscles beneath his white dress-shirt rippling strongly with the movement, "Remember that. And accept him nonetheless." As he said this, his tone sharpened, and his arms crossed. The car keys that had apparently resting in his arms all this time clinked gently and glittered under the harsh theatre light- Demyx winced as the gleams caught his eye.

He swallowed. "Okay." Sure, he didn't quite understand what Lexaeus was going on about, but- this man was Zexion's childhood buddy. Surely he'd know the actor more than anyone, and if it was about Zexion, Demyx would listen. It was hard to believe, though; Zexion was so ardent about the play's success, so _good_ at acting- how is it that he didn't quite fit into the niche of a passionate actor? What was so… off-beat about his conduct?

It struck Demyx as strange and true, but way beyond his comprehension. "Okay," he repeated, firmer this time.

Looking satisfied, Lexaeus clapped a hand over his lanky shoulder, before turning. "It was good to meet you," the laconic man said briefly, before effortlessly pushing open the doors and disappearing into the blazing light of day beyond them. He left Demyx in the waning rays that peered through the doors as they slowly drew to close behind him.

()(())()

The day went on with Xemnas suddenly taking and interest in Marluxia's script all over again, and taking the poor, frazzled playwright into a corner to discuss it with him. Saïx materialised a basket of fruits from nowhere apparently, strangely charitable and letting some of the braver members of the crew partake in some fruit, taking a banana for himself and idly consuming it as he watched Xemnas 'chat' with Marluxia over the poor, abused sheets of script. Naminé and Roxas sat on the stage with their legs hanging off the edge for quite a while, looking on with interest upon the sleepy Monday bustle of the _Final Limit _crew.

Larxene had taken to harassing Axel for about an hour on end, leaving the poor redhead's nerves shot and temper flaring. Demyx wasn't quite certain what their relationship was, but Larxene seemed particularly fond of chatting up the hung over redhead, no matter how much in pain he was or how often he winced and readjusted the ice pack on his head. Luxord looked pretty amused by the whole thing, despite being lightly hung over himself.

Sometime during the entire procession of events, Zexion had managed to squeeze away from Xemnas' attention, and snuck away towards Demyx, near the side-stairs of the theatre. Pressing an index finger to his lips to mark silence, he beckoned Demyx towards the front door. The musician leaned away from the curtained walls and silently padded up the stairs, watching the dark figure of the actor just a little ways away from him, erect and strong.

They soundlessly slipped out the front door together, simultaneously shutting out the sound of all talking, singing or other activity with the slow turn of the knob. Demyx fanned himself a little, thankful for the tiny shelter of the theatre building from the incredible heat of the day, smiling and looking at Zexion beside himself. "Stealthy," he grinned.

The actor shrugged non-committally, sideways gazing at the blond with tired eyes. It was strange to see him in the brilliant daylight- the sun seemed to bring out the stark colours of his hair and eyes even more than the darkness did, and made the depressing edge of his black pants and shirt just a little lighter. "I have to be to get away from Xemnas and Saïx, at times," he explained, eyes trailing off to look elsewhere- seemingly at the ugly palm trees that were kept planted in parking lot. "You look hung-over," he remarked flatly.

Demyx cringed and smiled at the same time. "You had to remind me."

Pressed up against the front door, seemingly cowering away from the sun, neither of them moved for the moment; Demyx finally resolved that Zexion probably wasn't about to initiate any movement on his own. With a sigh of resignation, the blond stepped before him, awkwardly stepping around the stairs to avoid tripping, and reached his arms out, snaking them around beneath Zexion's arms and pressing that smaller, skinnier torso to his own. With his hands on Zexion's back and the actor's chest against his, he could feel that small breath that moved that quiet heart into his neck. "I missed you."

Zexion snorted cynically. And then, he surrendered; he exhaled and slowly raised his hands to hold Demyx's waist, wrinkling the worn-down cloth of his shirt. "It's only been a weekend."

Demyx laughed into the actor's soft, sweet-smelling hair. Zexion would probably smack him if he took that moment to comment on the man's use of lavender-scented shampoo, even if it _was_ nice. "I still missed you, Zexion."

He didn't want to pull away when he did, but he didn't want to smother the shorter man either, and the heat was starting the crawl beneath his flesh and warm his blood. The air was heavy and humid, and it certainly didn't smell as nice as Zexion's hair, but at least it wasn't the stuffy theatre atmosphere. "What'd you do this weekend?" Demyx asked as he brushed the stray locks out of Zexion's single uncovered eye, watching how the man's dark eyelashes flitted unconsciously when he hovered his thumb over his brow. He was fully conscious of how Zexion remained still close to him, hands lingering lightly on his hips, and he honestly didn't mind.

Zexion closed his eyes and backed towards the outer wall, leaning against it, "I did little of note," he said, looking distantly off, "little of note transpires when Lexaeus and I go to... visit my parents."

Demyx blinked in surprise. "Your parents...? How are they?"

The smile on Zexion's lips was a very bitter one. "They're bedridden, Demyx." With dark eyes, he glanced up to look watch his expression.

The musician's eyes widened in surprise. "Huh? But- _why?_" When he'd last seen them on film, they were a commendably young couple, performing acrobatic stunts and singing and dancing with so little effort- it was terrifying to even imagine them bedridden. Of course, to be realistic, so much time had gone by. Demyx shouldn't have been surprised at the notion that they wouldn't be able to move now, but- "Damn-" Demyx cut himself off. "I'm so sorry. That's really- I mean, that was really insensitive, sorry-"

"No... You should know what happened to them..." Zexion shook his head, leaning and pressing it into Demyx's chest, catching him by surprise. "Why they are... Well; from the same thing that lets me be the way I am," he breathed. "Warfarin." As he spoke, his voice dropped and slowed, from clear pronunciation to nothing but a dazed murmur.

"Warfarin, Zexion? What's..." Demyx trailed off, looked down at the small figure of the actor. All that was supporting the frail, suddenly limp body was his pair of lanky arms.

He remained still for a moment, as he realised that Zexion had fallen asleep then and there. In the smothering humid warmth of the day, in the barely sufficient shelter of the theatre building front. From the quick way that he'd suddenly dropped into slumber, he must have been snatched away by one of those odd-natured sleep-disorders he was plagued by.

He didn't quite understand what Zexion had said, but at that moment he didn't mind. In the way that Zexion was like a puzzle, and in the manner that Demyx knew that somehow he alone was able to slowly work through the enigmatic young man, he felt some sort of an unusual consolation.

The musician was suddenly seized by the subtle impulse of the moment. Raising the sleeping actor's face to his, he quietly pressed a small, clumsy kiss on the bridge of Zexion's nose, watching the anxious way those lashes fluttered in dreaming sleep.

_**End of chapter eight**_

_**A/N: **So ah. In compensation for the last chapter's lack of Zexion... That. C: I hope you enjoyed the chapter! And sorry it was so excruciatingly long!  
The next chappy update will actually be probably sometime sooner, since it's actually pretty short.  
Reviews are like brownies and hot chocolate inside, on a rainy, cool day.. Feedback's like the sugar of a writer's life. : )_


	10. Chapter 10

_**A/N: **__Yo, all.__Firstly, I would like to deeply apologise for the extremely late nature of this update. I remember I told you all I would be quick to update since the chapter was already completed quite a while ago, but it just didn't meet my expectations, and I just couldn't bring myself to looked at Scripted straight for a long time.  
How are you all? It's been a really rocky two months for me. Crap's happened, to say the least. But good stuff's happened too. I turned fifteen, I graduated from one academic year, I dealt with some stuff... I lost some stuff. Typical life business really kept me busy for a while, so I'm sorry I haven't been able to give the story much attention.__  
But yo, I'm getting sappy.__  
Again, I'm soooo sorry for the ridiculous tardiness of the update! I shall try to be more precise from now on! Rawr.  
Please enjoy._

_

* * *

_

_**Chapter Nine**_

He could _hear._ He could feel the tough callouses of Demyx's musicians' fingers brushing hair out of his eyes.

But he was still trapped in a dream.

He heard Demyx's voice, but his mind slipped out of the continuity of time, dancing in the mental space between consciousness and...

And standing on his tip-toes, letting his mother kiss him on the cheek and say, "Babe, we're not going to move anywhere anymore. We're going to do theatre, just for you. Because we love you."

()(())()

And he's sitting at a chair that's too large for him, fourteen years old, staring blankly into the eyes of a man named Ansem.

"I assume you're my legal guardian, responsible for my general wellbeing and everything that entails it," he says, just-broken voice as flat as a corpse's heart-rate monitor line. He sets his small, translucently pale hands out and presses them flat against the mahogany, feeling miles in the distance between him and this man where there should barely be feet. "Therefore allow me to state one fact before we fall into some sort of pathetic semblance of an efficient, working emotional bond between guardian and ward: I am completely responsible for my parents' condition. I am responsible for my own condition."

The man across the miles-long desk sets down his own hands and clasps them as he presses them to the table, a friendly mirror to the firm, unshaking front that Ienzo is holding. He seems to be implacable in all the ways Ienzo isn't, and that only makes the fourteen-year-old feel more like he's about to explode. Then, not plastering on any sort of friendly pleasantry that he ward was grudgingly expecting, he says in a wise, somewhat elderly rumble of a voice, "What makes you think you are responsible?"

Ienzo feels both pleased and disappointed, and sits back into the chair, feeling it creak slightly. He tests to see if the armrests will accomodate his arms, but they are too far apart for his comfort; he stops everything when he realises that he is fidgeting. "It's a simple line of thought," he clears his throat and tries to sound professional, even though he is actually weak and sleepy. He hasn't wanted to eat very much lately, because after a year of taking things in intravenously, the body tends to raise an eyebrow at a sudden onslaught of a luxury known as food actually moving down the alimentary canal. And sleep... Well, he is still getting used to his newly diagnosed, poison-induced condition. "If I was content to simply keep on travelling and keep on acting, I would not have been such a burden on my parents. However, I was not, and I urged them to settle down. After being faced with my persistence, they eventually caved in to my wishes. If they had not, they would not have occupied that theatre. They would not have aroused the anger of that cult. The poisoning incident would not have happened."

He says this all with so much flatness that one cannot believe that this is a fourteen-year-old boy who was told only a week before that his parents will never probably never wake up.

He sets his hands out on the desk again, feeling the cool wood beneath his fingers, and stares at how long his nails have grown out since there are no longer any nurses to cut them once a week. "If I was content to act out stories instead of writing them, maybe they'd still be awake. Maybe they'd be as famous as they'd hoped to be."

"So you want to be a writer?" Ansem asks him after a considerable silence has fallen over the twilit glass office and Ienzo doesn't seem like he'll speak any more unless spoken to.

"No." He looks up, vivid blue eyes narrowing. "In their memory, I will not _want. _I _will_ be the perfect actor."

The truth is that, while he is a ward and Ansem is his guardian, they will never be closer than an occasional dinner together and a seconds-long 'How was your day' exchange. There is very little to say between them, because they are both very good at understanding. As a guardian, Ansem oversees any pursuit of Ienzo's ambition and helps out where he can. He will help to cover up and hush any publicity that may come about from the child of the Ishida acting family still being alive and not vegetative, as he has for the year even before Ienzo woke up. Only very small, trusted circles of people will even know Ienzo is alive, and if anyone calls him by his birth name he will first ask how they learned of it and then ask if they intend to blackmail him.

Ansem takes Ienzo to all the best doctors to see if the sleep conditions can be cured. He hardly raises an eyebrow when Ienzo requests to change his name, for safety's sake, and also to discard any weight-like shame his old one may be chained to.

Zexion is grateful and considers himself lucky, and then he continues to pursue his purpose.

It's a good thing Ansem is the head of the entertainment industry, or else his ambition would have been a lot more preposterous.

()(())()

The nightmare suddenly took a turn for the worse, there, because when one runs for too long in the wide scape of their memories, they will never manage to skirt about the less pleasant parts.

"It'll be over," Zexion said aloud in his dream, feeling his words reverberate clearly against the sides of his brain, before ricocheting back towards him in faint whispers. The familiar landscape of the stage stretched before him, hollow and dead and never happier to greet him. The place was empty, clear of its usual dead audience. But what remained was him- or who he had been: a short, naive twelve-year-old, still prepubescent, voice not yet broken, wearing an oversized coat for his role and staring at _him._ The shadow of his past had yet to bleed out and rot away into the little mess of blood it always was reduced to in _every other dream,_ but damned if Zexion still didn't like looking at it. "It'll be over. It'll be over. It'll be over. It's a dream. It'll-"

He was cut off by the sound of laughter. Happy, female laughter, with the spin of drunkenness in it, no touch of maliciousness. Like wisps of smoke it crept around his ears, here potently, gone there, but definitely present. Happily averting his eyes from the walking corpse staring at him, Zexion's attention panned over the entire theatre, searching for the source of the laughter. It was like a broken record stuck on a certain sound of his past.

The last time he'd heard his mother laugh. That was it.

Was he going to be going through this forever? Lexaeus mentioned- Lexaeus said something about the trauma 'fading to grey' after a while, but there seemed to be something in Zexion's brain that would _just not unplug._ Every other moment he collapsed, was he going to have to feel the low terror and sickness that this nightmare brought about... Every time? The thought went through his head like a searing bullet, making him feel strongly nauseated, even inside the dark shroud of his unconscious.

_"-t's a hate crime, plain and simple. They don't like what we did to 'their' theatre... so terrible..."_

The familiar voice of his family physiologist talking, voice racked and ragged with emotion.

_"-t's not that concentrated, here, just a sip- you deserve it, good job tonight-"_

A stranger. A nice, chubby stranger with all-white hair and a young soul and a spare glass of white wine in his hand.

_"We discovered what it was. Warfarin. It's sick- they took it directly out of rat poison and put it into all the white wine supplies. Sick. On opening night, too. Just... sick..."_

Why the hell did they even talk about that in front of him? He still had blood on his clothes when they brought him into the hospital.

His own voice. Timid and shivering and completely aware of what exactly had just happened. Much more aware than they thought he was. _"Mr. Boat... can I go to the bathroom?"_

He had felt sick. Not even sick to the stomach- sick to the _bone._ A kind nurse had escorted him there and waited patiently outside as he stumbled into the bathroom. Barely made it to the sink before he began to hurl. He strongly remembered the smell- vomit, wine, bathroom and Lysol, nicely messed up in his brain. Then blood, the smell and taste so potent that he realised something was wrong. Then he looked up into the mirror and saw- blood, seeping slowly from the spaces between his teeth and gums, dripping down his lips.

_"Ienzo Ishida. You've been in coma for one year, now. Your parents are dead, and you've been legally adopted-"_

_ "...Warfarin: poison, induces Vitamin K deficiency. Vitamin K deficiency: in severe cases, induces the formation of bruises, heavy bleeding from the gums and other orifices, may cause brain damage. Brain damage: may bring about death, coma, or... sleep disorders. You have been diagnosed with narcolepsy, insomnia being a part of it- must be from the brain damage you had from that haemorrhage, you're l__**ucky-"**_

"Zexion?"

Demyx's voice.

()(())()

He woke up with a raw throat and a sweaty, olive-skinned hand shoved between his teeth. Zexion blinked, uncomprehending for a moment before his returning senses assaulted him. He smelled the thick scent of paper and ink- his backroom. He tasted the salty, warm sweat of the hand, and the light touch of blood tinged the ends of his teeth where they sank into the flesh, and the small grains of vomit that had risen up his oesophagus. The sticky, warm saliva unpleasantly coating his lips. He could feel the uncomfortable, suffocating warmth of breath on him, his own recycled air, and a body planted directly above his.

Demyx's body. Demyx's left hand in his mouth, Demyx's fingers which his teeth were so cleanly lodged into.

With a small moan of protest, more so of confusion, Zexion yanked away, staring in after-nightmare shock at the hand that had been in his mouth just a second ago. A clean line of incisions reddened it, and blood beaded freely from them, blending in and joining the sheen of sweat and saliva. Zexion's only saving grace was that he hadn't vomited directly into Demyx's hand.

"I'm sorry," he inhaled sharply, gulping back the bile in his throat and weakly taking Demyx's hand, "I'm sorry." He looked up at the musician.

Demyx was uncomfortably pressed onto him where they lay together over the sprawl of pillows Saϊx always left there, with a clear expression of pain in his clenched face as he glanced down at his hand, making a small noise of discomfort as Zexion took the wounded appendage delicately between his own sweaty, slipping fingers. "I'm fine. I'm fine," the musician repeated wearily for each apology the actor spouted, drawing back his hand and rubbing it against his shirt. "You were talking a lot, screaming a little, too... You would have bit your tongue or something. I think." He laughed nervously. "Nightmare- no wait, you call that a daymare or something, don't you?"

Zexion felt the very distant urge to weep and suffocate himself in Demyx's chest. "I'm sorry," he said, voice less jagged around the edges this time as the terror in his spine waned, slowly pouring out to be replaced by sickening residue and the pooling volumes of guilt.

"It's fine," the blond assured, smiling weakly, taking the small chance to lean in and plant a quietly assuring kiss on Zexion's exposed eyebrow. They were both a mess, tangled together in the pillows with their clothes and hair dishevelled in musses of sweat from the hot day and Zexion's nightmare, but they could forget it for a moment. "You're okay, right?"

Zexion nodded shakily, and just stared with an uncannily dumb, blank expression on his face. "I'm fine."

"Thank goodness." Demyx hummed some unsaid words, before collapsing into the bed of pillows at Zexion's side with a huffing exhalation. Softly, as he stared up at the cracked wood of the ceiling, he asked, "Do you get those often? The... daymares. Whatever they are."

"Every night." He wanted to lie, really. To tell Demyx that this was the only time he had ever gotten one in a long time maybe, laugh lightly, and then run away. But it was Demyx- the only person who never did quite show up in his nightmares before; didn't that have to mean something? He glanced to the wall clock, squinting to see in the musty darkness- five in the evening, already? "Did I fall asleep?"

A small laugh. "Yeah. Went right out, like Snow White on the spot."

"I'm sorry."

"No-" Demyx said haltingly, "stop apologising. Ouch-" He shivered a little, clutching at his wounded hand. "Ahh- uh, haha, no, I'm good here."

That only made him want to apologise more. Grabbing a pillow from his side with his free hand, he pulled it onto his stomach and fisted his hand into it. He opened his mouth to say, _Let's get you treated,_ but Demyx had begun to talk.

"Zexion, can I ask you something?"

He took a halting breath. No doubt, Demyx wanted to ask him about everything: About why he screamed, about his terrors, about Warfarin. Zexion clenched his teeth in emotional pain and shook his head, hoping Demyx didn't catch the convulsion of emotion that ran through him at that moment. Of course Demyx had the right to know. Demyx was special to him in ways he didn't know how to describe in words, and if he was special then Zexion would not lie to him like he lied to everyone else in the world. "Certainly. Anything," he said half-heartedly.

Demyx brushed a thumb along the line of drying saliva, which had halted the flow of blood from the incisions in his hand somewhat. "Well... You've been really mean to be before, you know that? Like. Nasty mean."

"If 'mean' is the word you want to use," Zexion complied softly, even though he wasn't quite sure how Demyx was going to lead the statement towards his past. He inhaled the heavy smell of the backroom, and found it was blended with the pure scent of some sort of cologne the musician lying beside him must have been wearing. When Demyx didn't say anything, he assumed that that statement _had _been a question, and went on, "I'm... desperate to see this production through. And I don't know if it will succeed. With those two facts in mind, I'm... terrified, Demyx."

Why did it hurt to admit that he was terrified? It didn't even feel like tearing off a plaster; it felt like sinking his fingernails into an old scar and ripping it open, letting the blood and the poison in it pour out.

"Why?"

A flat, steadfast question that not even Zexion could take, mould and turn around. He felt cornered.

"If you don't wanna answer, don't," Demyx intervened in the silence, laughing mirthlessly and rolling over, off of the makeshift bed and onto his lanky legs. "You just... gotta be honest, okay? No lies." He set his uninjured hand on Zexion's writing table, skin scoping over the leaves of writing paper. "I feel like... you're the type of guy who likes to cover everything up with lies. Like a big, fat papier-mâché," he justified, stumbling over his own awkward simile. "And... you don't need to lie with me. I won't... judge you or nothing," he trailed off, weakly. "You can trust me."

Zexion looked at him coolly, taking in the words with slow, controlled nods. Something in his chest hitched, and but he continued to gaze through the dusty veil of darkness, watching the every fluid movement of the musician as he nervously shifted about. "Let's get your hand wrapped, you nut," he said at last, so quickly and softly that he was barely audible, and then he shifted and got onto his feet, pushing away the mountain of pillows and grasping at the wrist of Demyx's wounded hand.

Quietly, Zexion barely said "Thank you," as he turned away. Demyx's hand wrappred around his own wrist, and somehow he knew he'd been heard.

_**End of chapter nine**_

_**

* * *

****A/N: **__So sorry for the briefness of this chapter! I swear I'll get the next one up by Sunday or Saturday, depending on your timezones. If I don't have it up by then, feel free to nag me at my creative page, _gravitybeams . livejournal . com_ , spaces omitted. Eheh.  
Thank you so much for bearing with me this far._


	11. Chapter 11

_**A/N: **__Rawr! Have some cookies for staying with me this long, and then have a chapter! I just realised that I forgot to give review replies in the last one. OTL! I shall edit and give review replies as soon as I can! Thank you all so much for reviewing, reading, and generally bearing with my suckery!_

_-runs off and cries tears of joy and wimpiness-_

_

* * *

_

_**Chapter Ten**_

_"Dem! Get your laundry!"_

That was the fantastic thing about the paper-thin walls of the apartment they shared: Marluxia's deep voice was remarkably all-encompassing in reach. Not even Demyx's room, a shut door and a pair of headphones blasting music to their full ability could shut out the playwright's calls.

Demyx groaned, shoving his old headphones out of his ears and sitting upright in his tangled mountain range of bedsheets, accidentally pulling along his old CD player and blankets as he pulled on out of bed and groped for the doorknob. They clattered to the floor in a disorganised jumble, making the musician groan and curse as he slipped his hands about, disconnected and untangling just to free himself from his snares of wires and cloth.

Another fantastic thing about the apartment was that in Demyx's room, you could pull the blinds and shut the doors and turn off the lights and it would be as good as night time, and there would be nothing in the darkness but the pleasant, distorted light emitted from the bottom of his fish tank across the room, even in the middle of the day.

Half-dressed and just as awake, the musician entered the blinding light of day beyond his room. Bleary eyes creaked open, to reveal the sight of Marluxia- duster in one hand and stack of clothing in the other. Dem wasn't quite sure what a duster was doing in his roommate's hand, but he recognised that clothing as his own. Mumbling gratefully, he outstretched his bare arms...

And flopped forward into thin air.

Marluxia gazed at the floor with one raised eyebrow and something of a frown. "You need to get out more."

"You looked closer in my line of vision," he groaned, attempting to push himself up by his forearms.

The pink-haired man shook his head impassively, though a small smirk threatened to make itself known on his lips. "What do you have, fish-eyes or something?"

"Nooo, I just..." Demyx stood at last, dusting himself off and feeling a little dismay at the amount of dirt his jeans accumulated. He realised he couldn't remember the last time he'd actually gotten about to sweeping or mopping the floor. "Oh geez bajeebuz, Marly, my legs look like dusters."

Marluxia followed his gaze, staring at the strings of blackened dust, finely rolled and sticking to the worn blue fabric of Demyx's pants, and this time both of his eyebrows raised and he remarked, quite matter-of-factly, "We ran out of cleaning agents weeks ago."

"Go figure," the musician groaned, anxiously leaning over and attempting to brush off the tiny dust-bunny spawn making nest on his pants.

"I guess this means a trip to the convenience store. Get ready to go in five."

Demyx barely caught the stack of folded clothes thrown his way, and he yelped when he did.

()(())()

"What happened to your hand?" Marluxia asked as he rewrapped the light beige fabric of his scarf around his neck, wavering momentarily in his balance as a small gust swept in over them. The ocean-side walkway was mostly deserted, except for the two young men, balancing delicately on the concrete balustrade that marked the difference between the seawall and the park walkway. It was a gloomy day, with dreary clouds hanging low over the island city and baleful, stark breezes blowing in from the restless seas, yet the flatmates walked in perfect casualness. A rusty maroon compact umbrella swung from Marluxia's wrist, the only assurance against getting wet in the evidently approaching rain.

Not like Demyx minded. Thanks to his 'insane, unnatural biological anomaly of an immune system', in Marluxia's words, he was susceptible to colds passed on by others, but never caught one from nature itself. In better days with more time, he'd even run out in the rain, just enjoying the purity of the deluge at it came down from the heavens. Smiling giddily, partially from reminiscing on good times and partially from the rain, he ran a hand over his injuries, where they sat raw on the back of his hand. A small arc of lines, looking perfectly like a bite mark, yet Marluxia had politely avoided from calling it just that.

"Nothing really," he said, self-consciously burrowing the hand into the worn fibers of his old, oversized grey hoodie, _Hollow Bastion College_ logo, which was cheerful but seeming almost obsolescent in the way it was printed fadedly over the chest. The synthetic fabric paint was cracking and chipping away but it was still the most comfortable article of clothing Demyx owned (most of his wardrobe was composed of showtime, stage outfits prepared for all his college band performance, and the most of the other small percentage was lounging clothing, but he never divulged that to anybody. Especially when he couldn't afford a more practical medium between the two).

And of course, when Demyx said 'nothing really' and burrowed his hand away like that, he was lying and there always was a story behind that arcing line of deep bitemarks. But Marluxia didn't push it. He nearly missed the step of the next balustrade, though, and had to regain his stumbling balance as a new gust of wind whipped at them.

It was a day that felt like normalcy and routine, only embossed with the sudden turnabout in the weather- again. Tropical weather was constantly on a premenstrual cramp, burning the back of your neck one moment and then pouring on you then next. They'd come home from rehearsal early, Marluxia had dropped his messenger bag and all the script in it, took it out and sat down at his typewriter. It took only a few calloused keystrokes before he realised he wasn't going anywhere. Putting words on the paper took about as much effort as manually squeezing blood out of bone marrow.

So Marluxia had done laundry and dusting and some general housekeeping (which was, for the record, never enough for the paper dumpsite they lived in to be presentable but just enough for it to be comfortable), found his half-asleep roommate and decided it was time to get their asses out of their stinking, crowded, cracked-and-paper-thin-walled fifteenth-floor apartment and actually walked around somewhere. Of course, he hadn't anticipated the snarls in the weather, but beggers couldn't be choosers and the park was a nice, albeit underkept, place.

They walked in silence, the wind seeming to blow out any traces of a conversation that may have occurred on either of their minds. Neither of them seemed to mind.

Marluxia, however, nearly lost his balance when his phone suddenly began blasting a chipper ringtone. Grinning bashfully, he halted and drew it from his pocket, snapping it open and giving the billowing clouds an anxious look as he said, "'lo?"

Demyx stopped, stumbling to keep his own balance just a few feet away from his roommate, watching hesitantly as Marluxia nodded into his phone, giving out little 'mmm-hmm's and casting him furtive looks.

Finally the pink-haired man lowered the phone and looked at him clearly, now perfectly, gracefully standing atop the pinnacle of one of the balustrades. He smiled. "It's your sister."

Demyx froze. "Selphie?" he barely murmured the name out from between his teeth- not like he was gritting them or baring them or anything, but suddenly everything was pins and needles and he was afraid to move. He jerked unsteadily, before leaping off the paint-chipped seawall liner and landing on the rain-spotted pavement with a soft _thud._ Well, of course it was Selphie; Dem didn't have any other sisters that he was aware off. Feeling weak, he outstretched his hand to take the phone Marluxia offered him.

_"Myde."_

It was as if Selphie had known the exact moment when Demyx had pressed the phone to his ear. The pins and needles struck again, with shocking, toppling force, and Demyx reached his hand out to grab on the Marluxia, if only to regain balance. It had shocked him to hear Selphie's voice this time. He was a musically, aurally-inclined person who listened to the very rhythm of the world around him, but when he could only hear a person's voice on the phone, Demyx's ears picked up the tiniest things: cracks in the voices, small sobs that would have otherwise not been heard, or, in this case: the fact that Selphie's voice was not that of the child he had known. At least not wholly.

Behind that voice, there was thoughtfulness, pain, and a budding woman. It surprised Demyx to pick up a soft, deep tone in that girlish voice.

"_Myde, you there? I'm picking up static."_

"H-hey," Demyx muttered, realising that he'd clenched a loose fist in Marluxia's shirt. He let go, letting his hand fall limp against his body as he took another step on the railing and continued quickly, "No, that's just the noise around me right now. What's up?"

"_Not much, really._"

"Studies going okay?" Demyx grinned weakly.

_"Ugh, don't even remind me. I'm acing Science as usual and getting my ass saved in tuition in everything else. Man, why can't they teach us Chem yet?"_

It didn't feel anything at all like the heart-to-heart, sibling confiding-style conversations they had before Demyx moved out. It felt forced and slapped-on, like an old, worn-down jacket that was loose, worn thin, and not even his own. And what irked Demyx the most, what made the pins and needles subside and fade into the steady ache of the heart, was the fact that it only felt like that for _him._ He could hear the steady cheer of Selphie's tone; she was earnestly happy to be talking to him.

And he didn't feel anything at all but the vague semblance of dread and pain.

"You'd fly through Chem like the Road Runner on speed," he smirked, "that is, awesomely."

"_Aw, thanks, bro._"

There was a sort of silence that may have been awkward for her, but for Demyx it was filled with a leap from one pinnacle to another, watching the way Marluxia's shirt crumpled and stretched and ruffled in the intense wind. And grinning sheepishly when Marluxia looked over his shoulder and noticed, and winked jestingly.

"_So, um, I guess you know what I'm calling about."_

He felt a solitary raindrop hit his temple, and let it roll down his cheek. "Not really."

_"The wedding reception, Myde... It's on Sunday."_

Myde, more commonly known as Demyx, suddenly and urgently wanted to hang up and not think about it. But he inhaled, sharply, and whispered, "...Yeah. Okay."

He wondered if he'd even been heard, or if this was like all those other times when he'd both whispered and screamed about what he _really_ wanted and his relatives never heard a damn thing.

()(())()

"This girl, Demyx," Axel said in admiration as he ran a greasy hand over the naked engine of the large motorcycle, "is a _dear."_

Demyx blinked vacuously as he watched the redhead gasp over tiny doo-hickeys in the motorcycle, completely clueless about the machine himself. Despite their five-year companionship through a handful of issues, Demyx knew nothing of the vehicle aside from the fact that it had a beautiful deep blue paint job, and that Cloud had done a pretty darn decent job in restoring it from the mangled mess it'd been.

It- or she- was a medium-sized, imposing vehicle, and mercilessly costly. And she was just one of the musician's many careless purchases that had led him to the eventual financial rut he was stuck in now. "Uh," he grinned, sticking his hands in his jeans pockets, "it is?"

Axel frowned at him from where he sat- cross-legged and worshipful before the great vehicle. "You really don't appreciate this glorious machine much, do you?"

The musician sheepish grin only lengthened across his tired face. "More of a strings junkie than a grease monkey, anyday. I, uh, sorta just got the first bike that looked good," he admitted, shuffling around nervously.

Demyx didn't hate a lot of things, but right up there in the tiny list were 'apartment car parking lots'. He hated how sound travelled with as much acoustic harmony as an army marching into war. He wanted to splash the whole bare stretch of concrete with paint if only to give it a soul. He wanted to fill the wide open spaces with people, because when were huge apartment parking lots ever filled with people? Sure, the heavy, sickly-shaded concrete was great, warm shelter from the deluge outside but at the same time the vast expanses of emptiness felt like nothing but an unwanted husk of a real building. The never-ending rows of crappy cars and rusted-over motorcycles did not improve the image. It all only made him nervous.

He made an attempt to distract himself from the way the clinking of metal against metal, gear against monkey wrench, sounded when it whispered across the large space. "How's the bike look to you?"

"Damn beautiful, that's what, so stop bragging about it," the guitarist's shoulders dropped and he turned back to the motorcycle, turning up his long striped sleeves as they had fallen down and readjusting his grip on the monkey wrench. Demyx honestly had no idea what he was doing, but Axel professed to be 'good with machines' and Roxas had at least been there to confirm it. Only a day before, after leaving a snoozing Zexion on the audience chairs and proceeding to watch Xemnas verbally tear poor Marluxia's script to pieces, Marluxia's phone had rung and it had turned out to be Cloud, solemnly informing him that Demyx's motorcycle had been miraculously restored to a presentable extent.

And today, Marluxia's phone had run again and it was Axel, saying something about Xemnas not coming tomorrow. And somehow that conversation had turned to Demyx's almost-new bike.

And here it sat, stripped of shiny blue protective plating and susceptible to the mercy of a certain redhead. Demyx only hoped Axel wasn't installing rocket jets in it.

He reclined against a large pillar, absentmindedly twirling his housekeys in his hands. Really, letting the redhead tinker with his newly-restored vehicle was nothing but an excuse to run away from the apartment for just a little while. While he didn't exactly feel good about it, a frazzled, stressed-out Marluxia was not something he was capable of putting up with on all hours of the day. Even if it did mean leaving his room, food and laundry at the happy mercy of the pink-haired pseudo-hippie.

Another reason to disappear from the home was the fact that the new month meant a new onslaught of bills to accumulate on the dinner table, atop the pencilled manuscripts and written showtunes. There was something unbearable in the sight of Marluxia hunched over the table, using the pencil he usually wrote with to scrawl small numbers over a scrap paper and add up figures the musician couldn't yet pay for. Of course, Marly had withdrew into his room this time, locked the door and sat silently out-of-sight, but Demyx found that even _more_ unbearable.

"What I can't begin to comprehend is," Axel said conversationally as he began to attempt (and fail) to pull his shock of blazing red hair back into a black bandanna, "how in the world and heavens you could ever be related to 'Hell-Pikachu' Larxene."

Demyx quirked an eyebrow, listlessly filling the pockets of his abused, years-old hoodie with his sweaty palms. He still wasn't used to sticking his hands in his pockets and realising that his phone wasn't there; a constant feeling of slight panic, 'where is my phone?' plagued him at moments like these. "Larxene?" he laughed nervously, "to be honest, though I saw her today, before then we hadn't talked in years. I wasn't ever anticipating seeing her again."

_But then again you're not anticipating seeing any family members ever again, and look what happened? You got a phone call from Selphie a few days ago..._ a voice that sounded suspiciously like Zexion's dripped through his head like water through loose wooden floorboards.

"She..." Axel began, back to Demyx as he began unfastening a bolt on the motorcycle braking lines, apparently fingering for something behind it, "you do know that a lot of... unpleasant business has been stirred up by her, right?" The tension in his voice lined it like stretches of thread across the border of a cloth; you only had to look for it and you would find it. "In the play."

"Dude, I think we both know I've got no idea what you're talking about."

"Right." The guitarist pried out the bolt with his long fingernails, teasing the metal roll between his fingers before setting it on the ground with a small _clink._ "She raised some hell before you joined- back when the play hadn't gained any momentum yet. You know, she's a professional electrical contractor, had done some real special effects before and the like- she had it in her head that she, Saϊx, Xemnas, Zexion... they made the 'professional league' or something," he chuckled, "and that's about as much as the whole lot of hubris that it sounds like." He glanced up from his greasy hands to get a look at Demyx's face, and found the blond gazing back at him with unsurprised turquoise eyes. "You're not surprised?"

Demyx shook his head, raising a hand to run through his hair. "Not really. It sounds like something she'd do."

"Yeah?" Axel chuckled, "Well, get this. It's not like it's any secret, since just around the production we're all pretty open about who's lap-danced who," he said casually, though the anxiety in his words were just waiting to leap out and rip at the atmosphere, "but one time, for a little while, she-" he smiled warily, "was in it with Marluxia of all people. It was like a daily conference of bitch queens of both genders. If you ask me, it wasn't a very healthy relationship."

The blond started away from the pillar, face blank with surprise. "But I thought Marls was-"

"Dating Vexen? Yeah, before that," Axel interjected with a sort of sour look on his face, like the whole topic wasn't something he liked touching on, "a few months ago, actually. She dominated over Marluxia. Left the evidence all over Zexion's little backroom, ticked off TerminActor like nobody's business."

"Uh, gross?" the blond began, before mustering a glare. "...And this is _not_ gossip _how?"_

Axel shrugged dismissively, returning to his work. "Just so you know who's screwed who. Must be pretty awkward for your roommate to be roomin' with his ex's cousin," he flashed a cruel grin as he ran his hands over the long, rubbery black lines of the brakelines, silently admiring them. "And speaking of who's screwing who," he began, "what's up with you and TerminActor?"

The musician started again, but this time grit his teeth and leaned back against the wall, feigning at casualness. Seriously, it wasn't any of Axel's business what his relationship was with Zexion. Certainly, the guy could go and flaunt his relationship with Roxas for all Demyx cared, or inform him on the previous interrelations between his cousin and his roommate, but Axel couldn't speak one true word if Demyx didn't even open his mouth.

He apparently took the decisive silence with meaning. "I see how it is," he said lowly after a period of quietness, not even penetrated by the sound of metal against concrete, "you're dating?"

Demyx resisted a grin, bringing his fingers to his mouth in a gesture almost imitating the actor on his mind- only this time he wasn't pretending thoughtfulness, he was just hiding the small smile forcing itself on his lips. He'd only been 'with' Zexion in an uncertain little game of affections for a few days, but just the thought of taking him out on dates made his skin tingle with imaginative daydreams on what they could do on dates. Were they dating? Not yet. But the _anticipation_ alone and the fact that he had Zexion made him smile.

"Just so you know, and you _should_ know,"Axel began coolly, "there's nothing nice to him. You're fooling yourself if you start thinking there's some sweet prince beneath all that damned_ ice._ He just cares about the play and whether or not it's a success; soon as the curtain closes, you're gonna disappear from his life." At this point, he'd finished whatever he'd been doing to modify the bike, and was currently fumbling for the bolt on the ground. "So, let's just hope you're just in it for the sex- even if I can't see why anybody'd like having sex with that guy. Okay?"

He turned, giving Demyx a self-assured, sympathetic little grin that showed the white of his teeth well, even in the darkness of the parking lot.

Demyx just stared back, face a decisive blank.

Now, there were a lot of things you could call on Demyx for. He was a pretty pacific, submissive guy, with an endurance for criticism about as good as a beach chair's chance against twenty successive typhoons. But if you teased him about his sitar, he'd proceed to artfully bludgeon you with a plant mister, borrowed liberally from a rather courteous, wanly-smiling Marluxia. If you had insulted his taste for low-profile, indie musical movies, he'd obtruncate you. If you told him he'd be better off giving up his musical aspirations and slouching back to his family, he'd probably make you swallow Francium.

And if you were so unwise as to imbrute the idea of his relationship with Zexion, he would bludgeon you with a plant mister, leave you at the mercy of a million angry carnivorous fish, make you swallow Francium and _then_ obtruncate whatever was left of you.

Happily.

Because Zexion was slowly coming to embody everything Demyx was fighting and living for. Demyx was finding strength somewhere for the first time in his life, and he wanted to protect that.

That much was true, and for something true, Demyx would pull out the Francium _anytime._

But Axel was a friend. The nasty little smudge of misdirected good intentions only served as a brick among the many that paved the little yellow path to Hell- lesser known as a little inferno called Demyx's true, scarce fury. It would take more to evoke Demyx's rage. And today, Demyx was feeling good. So, with all good intentions, he nodded. He opened his mouth, tongue rolling over glinting, suddenly incisor-sharp teeth, and enunciated clearly through demurely smiling lips-

"Thanks for your side on it, but Zexion's not like that. We haven't even _screwed,_ Axel- pardon my language but, I'm pretty sure neither of us are in it for the _fucking..." _He uncrossed his arms, sauntering over to his motorcycle and brushing his hand across the leather of the seat, coldly.

And then, switching demeanors at the speed of light, he smacked on a bubbly grin and slapped the seat, laughing at nothing in particular and listening to the creepy way his voice reverberated through the parking lot. "But hey, thanks for working on her, thanks a ton. Even though I've got no clue what you did. Ooh, hey, what's that shiny doo-hickey thing you put there?"

()(())()

After a few months of sticking around the _Final Limit_ crew, dealing with the semi-competent-but-mostly-just-bossy directing trio of Xemnas, Marluxia and Zexion, enjoying the prolonged company of a frazzled little crew of earnest amateurs, Roxas had somehow nurtured a meek little love for acting. Namine, Kairi and the rest had urged him. Axel motivated him. Zexion inspired him as an acting role model (and little else). Marluxia harnessed his admiration with his persisting passion, if one was so kind as to ignore all the mood swings and the almost obsequious devotion he gave to his play.

Demyx... well, at the very least Demyx inspired sympathy.

But sometimes, even Roxas could be frustrated with the confused interconnected-one-moment-detached-the-next little fraternity that the members of the play made. The awkward communication between everyone only made things worse when, one moment of a festering hot day in the stuffy theatre, standing and having just finished the scene, blinded by the merciless beams of the spotlights Larxene was fixing on him, he had the sudden urge to drop to his knees and claw his hair out in frustration.

Zexion, standing only two feet away from him, was frozen in the last gesture of his character, but his face said all: the light blush of angry embarrassment of having had to act out such a script, the small fist he made with the sheets of his new lines.

Surprisingly, it was Saϊx who broke the proceeding silence, by swallowing a savagely large mouthful of the banana he'd been eating and remarking, "That was the most lacklustre thing I've ever seen, even with an actor like Zexion playing it to its full potential." He spoke as clearly as if he were on the stage himself, basically dictating the thoughts of every other crew member in his one comment. Unceremoniously finishing his banana, he tossed the peel to a nearby garbage bin.

"Yeah, whatever he said," Axel said quickly and dismissively, as if he agreed with Saϊx but didn't want to look at him too long or let anyone else let the words ferment in their minds for a while, "Mar-_lux-_i-a," he dictated slowly and condescendingly, obviously biting back a pained grin, "what the _heck_ was with that script? I mean-" he choked on a bit of laughter, catching the glares from the other crew members as well as you might catch rain in a paper cup, "I'm no good with anything to do with speaking lines off a paper, but even I could tell that that-" he gestured offhandedly to the stage, bracelet tinkling lightly, "was a mess."

By now, almost all eyes were turned on the playwright in question. Demyx, who was very cautiously still holding on to his instrument and sitting with folded legs on his chair, was the only one who risked a glance away from the pink-haired man, if only to cast a glance at Zexion on the stage; the actor was immobile, gazing at his script with dark eyes blazing with thoughts. Seeing how he wasn't about to make eye contact, Demyx's shoulders drooped and he followed everyone elses' gaze towards his room-mate.

At first glance, Marluxia was the perfect epitome of stillness. At second glance, he still was. It was only when Demyx narrowed his eyes and looked closely that he noticed that the playwright's hand, which was clutched around his script, was trembling.

The decisive neutral on Marluxia's face morphed- a spectacular and borderline horrifying sight to see- into a contrived, dark smile.

"I guess we'll just have to work on that, then," he spoke dully.

The proceeding silence that elapsed over the hall was every bit as unbearable as the first one. Demyx felt like he was being smothered by the lack of words.

It was thrown down by a blow in the the form of hands smacking together in a terrific, heavy clap of finality. Heads craned towards the stage, where Zexion's hands rested upon each other, and he clapped again. It was lesser applause than it was a call to attention. Even Larxene, behind her glass wall, pulled off her headphones in some indolent form of paying attention. Demyx felt his entire body stiffen.

Zexion's eyes narrowed as they trailed over small crowd beneath him, and he spoke, "Let's call a break for fifteen minutes. Demyx, Marluxia, a word."

()(())()

"I'd hate to quote Axel, but it applies, Marluxia..." Zexion enunciated coolly, hushedly as he drew Marluxia and Demyx in closer to a small triangle just below the stage, a safe distance far out of earshot from the rest of the slowly bustling crew, "what the _heck_ was that." His voice fell flat to the floor, muffled by the musty carpet. Never once did his gaze avert from Marluxia, impassively staring over seemingly every single facet of the man in one flicker of the eyelash.

The much taller playwright returned the look with an almost tired glare of his own. "Would you kindly stop staring me down, Zexion? I know you like mind games, but currently I tire of them."

"As if I am playing mind games by asking you what went rotten in that catastrophe I had to act through just now," Zexion snapped.

Demyx flinched and slowly began to back away, already feeling cold animosity building up between the two, and yelped when the actor swiftly grabbed a fistful of his hoodie and pulled him back into the triangle.

He all but snarled, "You're involved in this as well."

Currently at a loss for words, the musician shrugged helplessly, hands clasping pleadingly at the small fist Zexion had made in the fabric of his hoodie. A bemused and frighted smile pulled itself over Demyx's features.

Zexion answered the look with alacrity. "You're the musical director of this play. You are also his roommate. If I cannot get answers from the man himself, you are my alternative."

Marluxia reached out and shoved the smaller man away from Demyx, growling, "Don't bring him into this, Ishida. I can answer for myself."

Zexion's glare was hauntingly chilling. "Then _answer."_

"It's simple, really," the playwright's lips pursed unpleasantly, "it's the stress factor. The inexperience. The unusual way in which we're running this play to begin with. I don't know where I'm taking this thing. So how can I write through the peak of the tension when I don't know where to take it?"

It seemed as if, as soon as the sort of calm warmth of Marluxia's low voice was gone, a barrage of ice fell over all of them. Demyx felt very short of ready to clear out. No questions asked, no talking to Zexion or Marluxia, no saying bye, just plain out evacuating. Somehow, even with Marluxia just _looking_, even looking _down_ at the shorter Zexion, there was some sort of terror hanging perilously in the air.

"And how," Zexion spoke, "is it supposed to become problem of my own, or the rest of the people involved in this play, if _you_ are incapable of writing the climax? Do you wish to make this a universal issue when its diameter only encompasses _yourself?_ If you can't write the climax, then you _cannot write the climax, Marluxia, so don't give us drudgery and plaster the name 'climax' on it._"

Finally, the apparently implacable expression on Marluxia's face altered, if ever so slightly. His eyes narrowed, and he calmly pronounced every syllable of the following sentence: "I'm taking leave. For a month."

The actor grew still, breathing obviously very heavily. "You can't. This," he gently raised his hand to the script, held lightly against Marluxia's chest, "needs to be completed. This is a vital point for the play. You are not allowed."

Marluxia inhaled. Exhaled, very quietly. "I'm taking leave, Zexion."

"Did you _hear _me?"

But Marluxia had already turned away, skulking towards the audience seats. He picked up his bag from one of the front row seats, before nodding to Demyx and Vexen in a rough sort of acknowledgement, smiling morbidly even as he turned away and made his way up the aisle, towards the exit.

"Marluxia," Zexion hissed, low voice somehow carrying over the theatre seats, to the playwright of _Final Limit_, standing midway up the aisle to the exit, "you're not taking leave until this play is ready to be acted, from the beginning to the draw of the curtain. You cannot do that to this production. So turn around and finish what you have started." He paused, thoughtfully. "If you leave, it indicates your abandonment of all responsibility and ties with this play. You cannot take leave."

Marluxia kept walking, apparently impervious to the words directed his way.

For a moment, Zexion looked ready to yell out, snap and scream at Marluxia's back, over the audience seats, the crew, and the theatre. But then, the actor's fists clenched, and he breathed deeply, anticlimactically turning away and staring at the stage with an intense frown. Demyx could only uncertainly glance between the actor and the playwright, torn.

"Hey," he whispered, reaching for Zexion.

In response, he snapped into a ready position, jerking his head to look at Demyx with a heavy gaze. "Demyx, let's talk backstage," Zexion spoke quietly, quite calmly. Just over his words was the sound of the theatre exit door creaking to a close.

()(())()

"That was harsh," Demyx whispered anxiously, even as they were long out of earshot or sight of the rest of the production.

"That was completely necessary," Zexion negated flatly, pressing himself tiredly against the bare concrete walls and running both hands through his hair, lightly massaging the area of the bridge of his nose before settling on his temples. "And a complete headache."

The musician bit his lip, looking at the backstage door like it was, in some symbolic sense, Marluxia. "He might not, you know..." he murmured, arms dropping to his sides, "come back." He wasn't quite crying, but flashing back in his mind to the image of Marluxia turning away and walking with his back to the crowd made him feel surreal and heavy. "That was really harsh," he added redundantly.

Finally, Zexion's shoulders slouched in defeat. "Speak what you will, then," he said, sourly pressing his lips into a thin line.

Demyx sighed, and reclined against the opposing wall, shuffling his feet and stuffing his hands into the pockets of his hoodie.

"I have to be blunt, you know. These rules and policies existed from the start," Zexion growled, staring into the slightly stained concrete wall. "Adults are expected to conduct their work efficiently and completely, or they will lose their job. If you have any goal, you must work towards it or you will never succeed. Our goal is the success of this play, and Marluxia's job was to write it. So it is standard that I am to correct any errors made, out of..." he paused, and Demyx could have sworn that he saw something about Zexion there. Something scrabbling helplessly and attempting to defend itself. Demyx smiled weakly, and patiently waited.

Zexion looked at the floor. "...Out of mainly benign intent, of course."

"No need to try to justify yourself so much. I know what you mean," the musician nodded at last, eyes fondly appraising Zexion in the strangely vulnerable moment. There, in the dim, musty privacy of the backstage hallway, the actor who had previously stared down a man much taller and more muscular than himself, had seemingly shrunken, withrawn and hid behind some sort of invisible shield of defence. Demyx pushed away from the wall and touched Zexion's shoulder, letting a stupid thought occur in his mind: _If I touch his shoulder like this, right now, will I feel what he's feeling? Will I know what's going on in that mind? Will I understand him better?_

Zexion shuddered in a breath, and stared at the hand resting on his shoulder as if it were an unusual, but not entirely unwelcome, intruder. "I just want what's best for the play."

Demyx grinned. "Maybe people would understand that better if you were nicer about things."

The actor smirked weakly. "So my intentions are grossly misinterpreted. Lovely. What else is breaking news?"

"Hm," he pretended to think, even though the answer had been irking, haunting him all day long. "There's a wedding. Sometime soon." Those five words made a lot of sense in his head, but from the blank, expectant look elicited on Zexion's face, what he'd said hadn't made much sense to anyone else. He'd been thinking about this too hard. Trying to balance Zexion and Selphie, on versus ends of a scale was about as easy as catching smoke with his cupped hands. Hesitantly he clarified: "And my parents are invited. And me. I want you to meet them."

"Considering that they are your parents, you don't seem all that happy about it," Zexion remarked, gently shrugging off Demyx's hand and pacing towards the backroom.

"Yeah, well... We're," the blond laughed, "We don't get along. I... they did a nice job raising me, yeah, but- the sort of kid they want was a marine biologist, a millionaire, and a nerd. I tried, I swear, but I just didn't fit the mould." The mirth in his expression stiffened into a slightly mad look as he said hushedly, "I really tried, Zexion."

At that moment, Zexion looked like he wanted to say something like '_I tried, too'_, but then the moment flicked away with the certainty of an illusion and the actor shook his head. "I'm glad you didn't bend and break yourself to try and fit it," he said, smiling dryly, "it would be a terrible shame."

_I'm glad you didn't bend and break yourself to try and fit it._

_ It would be a terrible shame._

What was that supposed to mean?

Was it supposed to mean what Demyx wished, with all his heart, blood, body and soul, it did?

Demyx didn't know what to say, only knew that the words caught his breath like a sudden, slapping downpour, and it made it hard to speak, and still harder to breath.

"...I... Thanks. So... can you please come? I won't lie; I want you there to support me when I face them, because... it hurts a lot when I talk to them. And it's been years. You're kind of good at taking all the awkwardness and just- helping me. Yeah. I'm sorry I gotta ask you to do this," he found his eyes watering again for some inexplicable reason, and sniffed as he raised a hand to wipe away the excess pooling around his eyelids and distorting his vision. _What the heck, Dem? There's nothing to cry at, you weirdo..._

"It's fine. I'll come," Zexion said distractedly as he stopped just outside of the backroom, gaze fixing on Demyx through the darkness. His blue eyes widened when he seemed to notice the unusual glitter of tears glazing over Demyx's eyes. "Is something the matter?"

Except there was everything to cry at; _Zexion accepted him for who he was. _How could anyone have so easily wrenched a hand into Demyx's heart and pulled out the his most fundamental, almost subliminal desire, and place it so calmly before him? As if it were nothing but a passing truth, a nonchalant word spoken in honesty?

Zexion politely said nothing as Demyx felt the tears freely roll down his cheeks, pooling at the outlines of his chin before dripping onto and being absorbed by his rapidly dampening blue shirt. Zexion just nodded serenely and said, "Come here," voice spare of all the resignation Marluxia would sigh with whenever he and his flatmate pulled into consoling embraces, and held Demyx's temples, and pulled the musician towards him. The musician's body wracked with an isolated sob as the tears intensified, and Zexion seemed to elevate as he went on his tip-toes and pressed his lips to Demyx's temple.

And Demyx finally complied, crumpling like paper and falling into an awkward hug with Zexion as they both collapsed against the wall. He cried desperately at nothing at all, feeling the pressure of all the past months cascading out of him with every hot tear that stung his eyes.

()(())()

That evening, sitting in the apartment with only the sound of rain to comfort him, Demyx's hands idled with the pink phone- his flatmate's phone- as the pink-haired man slept deeply in the nearby room, Vexen hovering over him like a hawk. No words had been exchanged that evening and none needed to be: the understanding was clear as clean glass. Demyx understood that Vexen would remain there for as long as he wanted, probably until Marluxia was feeling better, and in the meantime the musician was going to be nothing but an unwanted third wheel.

He flipped open Marluxia's phone almost dutifully when it vibrated with a message.

Demyx bit his lip and felt the weary ring around his eyes, and then smiled with earnest happiness.

_"Demyx- Be it a wedding or to meet your parents or both, as your friend I would happily go with you anywhere should you only need me to. P.S. Get a phone of your own. It feels awkward to text this to your flatmate's number. Is he all right? -Zexion"_

He texted a reply. _"He's fine, I think. Thank you, Zexion. So much. You've got no idea what this means to me. -Dem"_

The response came a minute later, and the minute felt like a hesitant pause- one filled with wishes to say a million things, only to condense all the wishes into two words. _"Sleep well."_

_**end of chapter ten  


* * *

**_

_**A/N:**_** OTL **_So uh. Uh. Yeah. We're getting near the end, now, actually. Yeah really. We're getting there. : ) Thanks so much for reading, once again. Reviews are munched upon with relish. Thank you all!  
_


	12. Chapter 12

_**A/N: Oh dear, woah, chapter eleven. Hi, all, how's your summer going? On whatever corner of the world, is it raining, snowing, blazing, or blowing?  
Here's chapter eleven.**_

_**Review Responses:  
luckless-is-me:**__ With relish, because I appreciate and nom on reviews? Eheheh. Go ahead and worry about the wedding, but you shall see how it goes soon... Hurr hurr hurrr...**  
Dream Me Asleep: **__Yeah, updates should be back on their routinely one-chapter-a-week schedule, if all goes okay! I may even update quicker as we get closer to the climax. Glad to hear Scripted can make people smile.**  
orgymoogle: **__So, uh, generally people prefer less lengthy chapters? My apologies if my pacing seems out of whack, then. Guess I'm still getting a feel of things then, eheh.**  
CatCrescent: **__Thank you! That is one of the kindest things I've ever heard from someone about my writing. I'd like to let you know that I was really happy to hear such a thing... But please don't marathon-read too often! o.o And please don't die. o.o;;**  
PinappleDuck:**__ Hahaha, of all things to hear a comparison with- Inception! Here, have even more Zemyx cookies. There's plenty. :3_

_**Big thanks to everybody else who left a review! Sorry I can't write responses to every single one, but I'll keep trying. Enjoy reading!**_

_**

* * *

****Chapter Eleven**_

Marluxia finally woke up at seven in the morning, groggy and sweaty. Better rested than he had been in days, he rolled over and absorbed the gravity of reality, starting at the beginning: How he ended up in his bed, dirty and thirsty, when his last cognitive memory was that of Vexen scolding him to bits at the front door of his apartment. Faintly the memories of ripping up the script he'd slaved over for the last few months trickled into his mind, and detachedly he reclined into his too-warm sheets and felt the pictures of the jigsaw slowly reassemble.

Only did his grasp on reality fully clench when he heard the shuffling of someone else in his room, taking long paces on his carpet floor, breathing in his rose-scented air.

"Vexen," he croaked aloud, voice rusty from misuse and disuse alike, groping out of his sheets and blinking in the darkness. Barely he could discern the lanky, tall figure of his boyfriend, skulking in the darkness, towering over him, yet the expression on Vexen's face was out of sight in the blackness of the morning. There was something terrifying about that, even if it was just Vexen. Marluxia repressed the urge to rewrap himself in the sweat-dampened sheets and forget it.

The orbs of Vexen's poison-green eyes flicked in even the minimal lighting. "You're awake," he said, nasal voice cutting sharply into the air.

"You haven't slept?" Marluxia murmured, before throwing open the sheet and baring the bed welcomingly. "Come here."

The figure seemed to cross its arms. "I've slept; on your ridiculously sullied couch. No, I won't go to bed with you."

Marluxia felt the slightest irritation stir up inside himself. "What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing," Vexen replied, just as concretely calm. "What's the matter with _you?" _he parroted. If he was speaking in his normal mannerism, he would have enunciated much more sophisticated vocabulary as a masque to the very same question, but something bounced as bitter and meaningful when he mirrored Marluxia's brutish, groggy word choice.

The pink-haired man laughed through mussed-up, tangled locks. "Nothing, really." He marvelled at the raspiness in his voice- a good swig of _something_ would be good, to wash the gravel away. "Vexen," he said with renewed urgency, shifting to prop himself up on his elbows. His eyes dilated with a grey blur, slowly painting the details of Vexen's sharp facial features in the minimal light, "Seriously, what are you doing here? And don't say it's anything related to me," he gestured to his pale, sweat-plastered forehead, "see, aside from being a little sweaty from a humid night, I'm pretty sparky. And I'm flattered, but when you hawk over me all night over nothing, I'm going to end up worrying about you." His tone was like the lid on a boiling pot; forcing down the desperation, steam and pressure just breaking at the surface.

Vexen stared at him with wide, glinting eyes, and then he stated in a deadpan, "It's been a cold, rainy night. You're sweaty and wet because you were rolling around and crying in your sleep. Don't make me more concerned about you."

Marluxia blinked, before jerking his head in a feral motion. "Everybody cries. Some people are weaker than others, but we have to cry sooner or later."

His boyfriend was silent, morbidly crossing, recrossing his arms and gazing at the heavy, thick darkness beyond the balcony.

"What, did you think I was somehow a _pillar _of resignating strength that would never chip ever so often?" he hissed out into the darkness, "It's not like- Vexen, you see all those people outside in the daytime, what do they do? They don't put up with this shit," he pointed to the typewriter, the cracks on the wall, the withering, neglected plants on the shelves, "they don't put up with this. They haven't had all this pressure. They get their stupid excuses for spotlights in life and they're _happy_ with that inane reliability. But me.. I've _seen._ Ups and downs. The corporate side of the entertainment industry. The gore that goes on to keep those hollow people rotting at their television satisfied. _I keep up with that._ So hell yes, I cry in my sleep, if only because I'm damned tired of this."

His boyfriend interrupted him by seizing the contours of his face and all but yanking him into a powerful kiss. Marluxia blinked owlishly into it, and realised that it felt more like the soft surfaces of their lips being crushed together than a kiss. Pulling back and rolling into the covers, he lay on the bed and stared at Vexen's impassive face. "What the hell was that for?" he grunted, slightly subdued, even when they both knew that there was an odd and strong reassurance in that brutish, cold embrace. Something that reassured that both of them were still there. "You stubborn bastard, standing awake and watching me get all kiddy and sloppy in my sleep."

"You weren't crying about the entertainment industry, just so you know." Vexen's lips pursed into a string of a line, withdrawing and crossing his arms. "And I thought you had more honour than to let yourself be reduced to a complaining romance hero."

"Complaining to you helps," Marluxia admitted, voice muffled by the covers. "Relieves stress. I certainly can't complain to Demyx or Zexion or anyone else. They'd be too shocked at the fact that I'm complaining in the first place to hear a thing I'd say."

"That's only because you're more the type to take action instead of sit about and whine worthlessly," the scientist opted to stand still, and tower above, looking aptly unsatisfied with his arms crossed and his pointed frown extending over the slightly aged flesh of his face. "But the problem persists. You are still swamped with stress and worries. You have just left your own play production and cut yourself out of the picture you painted, wholly. I understand this was because you couldn't keep up."

"Yeah." There was a pause, wherein the playwright hardly moved. The entire room was so still that it was almost as if Marluxia had just pressed his face into his pillow just a little too long; decided it wasn't worth even talking anymore. And then he rolled over, and gazed at his boyfriend, sparks of slight anger igniting in his bloodshot eyes. "I bet you're just thinking, 'what the hell is he going to do now, eh?'. I've made a mess, Vexen. Left a work half-baked and at the mercy of a cast and crew with little to no idea what to do. I just couldn't... I couldn't write. I felt it the whole way through, almost. From the beginning I started writing, I had a feeling I was running towards something. Some kind of truth. I guess the truth would be that I really don't actually want to write this play. Or maybe any plays at all. So, yeah... Fuck that. It's a nice bloody mess for me, of sorts. First failure and all." He rolled again. "...Vexen, I'm sorry. I'm very tired."

Vexen said nothing. He certainly didn't say_ "What can I do to make it better?"_. He just stood, evaluating, perhaps, stance wavering ever so slightly, gaze imperturbably fixed on the emaciated form tangled between the sheets. And then he heaved a sigh, hovering over towards the bed and fell into it, just barely fitting against his boyfriend's back and wrapping his long arms around his torso. Together their forms fit, even though if either of them shifted just a bit there wouldn't be any more space on the bed. "You fool. When you're tired, you sleep. When you're angry, you shout. When you're hungry, you eat. Common sense. When you don't want to do something, don't pretend to put your heart into it. All you'll put in will be gore and blood and an outright mess; everything that isn't what you want."

Marluxia chuckled emptily and buried his head further into the pillow, but not enough to stop breathing.

()(())()

"Marluxia isn't here, huh," Axel said vacantly, lanky legs making bobbing motions to the song in his head. The slippers just barely dangling from his toes made slapping sounds against the wooden stage stilts. The redhead looked a little dazed. By his side, Roxas gave a small 'mm' sound of distant acknowledgement, absorbed in a Chemistry textbook and mostly unaware of the world beyond its pages. Slightly irked that his boyfriend paid him no attention, Axel huffed and scanned over the scene of the theatre at ten in the morning. "Vexen too. And TerminActor's not even here yet."

Demyx bit into the inside of this cheek. "Yeah. Well, you consider the rain," he reasoned lightly, "maybe he's just stuck in traffic or something." They both skirted around the topic of Vexen and Marluxia.

Axel grumbled something incoherent, crossing his legs and slouching. The auditorium was hushedly quiet, with only about ten people present, shuffling around and pretending to be doing something. "Man, this is bull with a capital S," he grumbled. "What are we supposed to do if our flower boy's not here to push us around? Not even TerminActor. And Xemnas's not gracing us with his graceful greatness today either, so what happens?" he raised his hands to the heavens. "Bull. With an S."

Roxas's eyes didn't leave his book. "I don't think you use 'bull' that way." He traced a long finger over an illustration. "'Bull' is more for like... lying."

Axel just chuckled.

Demyx felt something sour curdle in the base of his stomach. Watching the technician's box, he saw Larxene playing around the controls and screwing over the lights- blinding one moment, gone the next, killing his vision trying to adjust. Noticing him, she gave a grin barely visible beyond the lights, flashing him a thumbs-up and evening out the distribution of beams.

"What the hell, Larxene..." Axel bemoaned beside him, "she oughta be glad I don't have hangover right now, or there'd be bloody murder."

"As if you could kill her," Roxas mumbled as he flipped a page. "She'd sooner cut your hair."

"True, that..." The redhead thoughtfully sucked in the inside of his mouth, watching as the technician across the theatre instead opted to mess with the curtain. The long, billowing satin just next to Demyx gave small jerks in and out, causing the musician to jerk and make a small whine of disapproval.

"There seems to be a stalemate," Luxord said almost cheerfully as he walked directly into the stage, wearing a rumpled white dress-shirt smartly tucked in, and flicking the deck in his hand in some-or-other complex illusory trick. "As expected for a Tuesday, yet even more funereal than before," he continued, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that he was the only one contributing to the depressed excuse of a conversation.

_ Funereal's probably the word for it,_ Demyx decided as he nervously plucked at his blue wristband, snapping away some of the droplets of water. Even if he did put on his old raincoat and his helmet when he got into his motorcycle that morning, the deluge had been enough to soak well into his skin and leave a cool trace to blend in with his guilt and lack of sleep, and make a sickly concoction. _Funereal. Like Marly's dead._ His eye twitched as something in his head pricked into it like a needle, and he sucked in a long, desperate breath. Axel was just trying to make peace, maybe to make up for their conversation over his motorbike the other day. Luxord was just being casual to alleviate the tension. _If the past is the problem, the future will solve them... something like that._

He glanced at Axel. It'd been only a week or so since he passed his CD to the fellow musician, and since the Sunday party there hadn't even been a mention of it. It would be awkward to ask now, but Demyx couldn't help but wonder where that CD had gone. He wouldn't blame Axel if he chucked it into a trashbin; he bluntly refused to feel a thing. It happened to him so many times before, so would it matter if he told off the redhead and struck a bad note, if he proved himself not worth helping, and Axel just decided not to bother? Demyx felt his stomach clench, against his wish. _It wouldn't matter, _he told himself. _It'll be okay._

"What do you gentlemen say to a time-passing activity such as Poker as we wait for the rest of the league to join?" Luxord offered to the stagnant air between them.

"We'll pass," the redheaded musician suddenly cut in, ignoring the slightly crestfallen look he elicited from the gambler. As if he'd been in synchronisation to the troubled thoughts playing through Demyx's mind, Axel straightened up and stood, wrapping a bony hand around the musician's elbow and basically dragging him off the stage by the stairs, drawing him away from the general crowd and speaking quite stiffly for a change, "Demyx."

Demyx faked a wide, happy grin- _Damn._ Axel was looking worried now, when he hadn't really done anything wrong. He felt that uncomfortable twinge in his stomach tighten with pressure. It was his own fault for being depressed and letting it rub off on the redhead, who'd been doing nothing but handing out favours and looking out for him from day one. His azure blue eyes met with Axel's blazing ones and he exclaimed a little too loudly, "Dude. Why the depression?"

Axel smiled back, uncomfortably. "I just- man, music's all about being what you want to be. Don't let what happened to Marluxia get you down," he consoled weakly. "And date Zex if you like. It's your business, seriously, not mine to hawk over it and gossip like a pubescent girl," he laughed, clapping a hand over Demyx's shoulder, bracelet tinkering to the motion. "So, sorry about that crap I gave you. Oh, and can't be your fault if Marluxia's got a little monthly pain, get that memorised." His expression shifted to a serious one. "All right?"

Demyx blinked, nodding hesitantly. "Okay..."

"Yeah." The redhead looked relieved. "I sent in your CD a while back, by the way. My man's saying he'll give it a good ear and have word back to me in maybe a week. That all right?"

His shoulders sagged, even as his expression brightened hesitantly. "Man... you still sent in that CD even after I snapped at you?" Demyx smiled sheepishly. "You really didn't have to."

And, strangely enough, Axel snickered. "What'd you think I do, keep it for myself? Don't get a swollen head there, mullet boy," he gave a playful shove away with his previously rested hand, and in the same moment wiped away all the tension, "It's our job now to make sure this play stays buoyant while flower boy's out of commission, so I guess we'll have to be working with TerminActor on that one... I guess we'll make do," he shrugged, surprisingly resigned, before warily continuing, "I mean, you two aren't pulling out each others' hair anymore." He met Demyx's eyes again, this time with a small, almost incriminating gleam in the deep green, as if asking, _You two aren't __**really**__, are you?_

Demyx ignored the look completely, letting the thought of Zexion pressing kisses to his forehead flicker through his mind, before smiling genuinely and letting out a small, melodious laugh.

()(())()

Saϊx stood planted at Zexion's doorway, long arms stretched far and touching each side of the doorway, a protective wall of a man keeping the actor from rushing out. The blue-haired man's impassive gaze flicked from the stony-faced best friend to the actor himself, before he said, "By my own judgement, you're unfit for going to work today," coldly and strongly, just the same tone you'd use to verbally degrade someone, flexing his arms a little before dropping them, giving Lexaeus a look. "Do you not think so, Lexaeus?"

Zexion stood as the smallest of the three, yet he burned with an aura of anger that seemed to encompass the entire living room of his apartment. He smelled like Lexaeus's bacon, eggs and coffee, and looked like a train wreck personified. "Saϊx," he said coolly, sounding almost strained around the edges as he pulled his messenger bag strap over his head and thrusting it in his manager's face, "do you know what's in here? In this bag is the saviour to the play. I did not stay up _intentionally_ into the deep crevasses of the night and endure severe sleep deprivation, narcolepsy be damned, to sit about lamenting life. Last night, I wrote the _climax_ for _Final Limit_ in Marluxia's stead, and this play has a deadline and opening night, time is of essence-"

"No." Saϊx's ever-present frown seemed to extend even longer than usual and his yellow eyes scanned over Zexion's haggard appearance with severe disapproval. "It is your own fault if you aren't able to compromise work for your own health. As your manager I will not allow you to attend work unrested."

The slate-blue-haired man blinked owlishly, reaching a hand and running it frustratedly through his long forelocks and swallowing back the angry sigh climbing up his voicebox. "All right," he near-groaned, "I acknowledge that this is not rational, but I truly must attend rehearsal today, Saϊx. Marluxia is not there and neither is Xemnas; who, then, will direct?"

Saϊx did not move. "That is not your responsibility. You _are_ head actor." Reaching out and grabbing the messenger bag from Zexion's shaking, skinny arms, he held it out of grasp and continued, "You _aren't_ the writer or director."

Zexion looked a cross between mortified and positively murderous then. "Give me the bag, Saϊx."

"You aren't a writer," Saϊx elaborated calmly. As always. He reeked a sort of secure little air that was so distinct to him, like the smell of Lysol barely covering up decay, blood and base animalistic being, which always sent Zexion and his acute sense of smell reeling whenever he was too close. Saϊx first smelled like men's cologne, and then he smelled like sweat and sex and books, and while Zexion wouldn't be repelled by any of the scents on their own, the combination made him flinch.

No- Saϊx himself made him flinch at times.

"Yes, I'm something I don't want to be because of someone I love, doesn't that sound _familiar_?" Zexion snapped as he made another futile grab at the bag, quite well knowing the jab he was making. _"You_ never wanted to be in the entertainment industry, even as someone's manager; look where _your_ rational mind delivered you," he gestured to the man's platinum wedding ring, where it caught the light in the late morning sun.

Seeming to notice the dangerous lines which the conversation was teetering on, Saϊx jerked the bag's strap over his own shoulder and held it there securely, saying, "You aren't fit to go out right now, even aesthetically. A stranger on the street would try to hand you money."

The actor looked at him with half-lidded, irritated eyes, lips twitching into a deep frown. "If I were to take a shower and shampoo my hair and dress up nicely, would you let me out?"

Saϊx withheld a cruel smile. "No."

Zexion looked liked he'd been expecting that answer. "Lexaeus," he turned to his best friend snappishly, "you tell me, is it proper for me to be confined here?"

The huge man, who'd been staying with him overnight to help him through writing the twenty pages of script, who'd been eternally helpful in making him breakfast and dinner and seeing to his health, heaved a rumbling sigh and crossed his arms, drumming his fingers against the taut muscles just beneath the white fabric of his shirt. "To be honest, Zexion, you look terrible."

"Oh, for goodness's sake-" Looking offended, Zexion glanced over himself appraisingly. The plain black shirt and the jeans he was wearing were yesterday's clothes, yes, and he hadn't run a brush through his hair today, but he deemed himself presentable enough to stand on a stage and deliver his lines. "This is suddenly a matter of being aesthetically pleasing?" he protested, resentfully pulling at the cottony fabric of his own shirt like it was some sort of specimen.

Saϊx mirrored Lexaeus's pose, crossing his own arms and securely barring Zexion from attempting to grab back his bag. "Well, I'm certain you wish to look good for your-"

Zexion turned on him like a sniper scoping in on a running target. "Demyx is not relevant to this," he growled, letting all his restraint crumble to dust.

"Hm, I never even thought of him. Of course he isn't," Saϊx agreed with feigned affectation. "Naturally he is completely irrelevant to your recent lack of rational thinking."

The actor swore beneath his ragged breath, turning on his heel towards the bare, dark-blue-tiled bathroom and disappearing behind the wall, and there was a vague motion of his cast shadow throwing open what must have been the medicine cabinet. Lexaeus sauntered close behind, peering into the bathroom with a very dark expression, sturdy body completely blocking Saϊx's view from whatever Zexion was doing. Moments later he emerged from the bathroom, small pink pill in his open palm, and skulked towards the immaculate but small kitchen on Saϊx's right, acting as if the manager didn't even exist.

He caught sight of the pill, and raised a light blue eyebrow in disbelief- he actually _recognised _the bloody thing. Not like he would have liked to, but olden days stuck fast in his mind and some of his less-fond memories made the sight of the pill a very strong, very recognisable one. "Diazepam, Zexion? I thought you were above drugs," he remarked slowly as the actor hastily filled a glass with water and downed the pill.

Zexion cast him a very foul, very irate glare. "And I thought you were above letting personal judgement interfere with your career, so I suppose we are even now?" he sat as he slammed down the glass with extraneous force, marvelously managing not to break it and yet elicit a sharp clanging noise as it collided with the wooden surface of the kitchen counter. He turned and stalked to the nearby, rather aged-looking couch, dropping into it and picking up a thick hardback book from the coffee table.

It was evident that they both saw he wasn't going anywhere for that day.

()(())()

Demyx waited until five in the evening, letting the day swirl by like run-off storm water filing obediently into the holes of gutters in the pouring rain outside. Sometimes he played his sitar, other times he talked with others in mundane conversation that neither participant really remembered at the end of the day, once he even sat down and seriously discussed the music in the play with Axel, and that had taken the best half of the day. Then the high of expecting Zexion grated and wore down, and resignedly he sat down for a game of Blackjack with Luxord, ignoring how the bored-looking masses of the play cast and crew filed out of the theatre one by one, saying their goodbyes and heading home.

It had been a useless day for the lot of them, filled with pointless attempts to pass the time as they waited it out for a leader of some sort. Without Marluxia, or even Zexion, the _Final Limit_ crew was an aimless force. The resigned, depressed air of the production was only further set in stone by the terrible rainy-season weather.

"Nineteen," he said smugly as he dropped his eight of spades two fives of hearts and on the wooden floor of the deserted stage. Cross-legged and comfortable, Demyx wasn't willing to leave the musty warmth of the theatre for the deluge outside any time soon. As much as he liked the rain and the water, Marluxia's not-exactly-waterproof phone sat cradled safely in his pocket for safekeeping, and the idea of riding home on his bike through the whipping wind and heavy traffic, just to be greeted by his depressed flatmate and a cranky scientist-cum-props director rather discouraged him from leaving the theatre.

Hey, at least Luxord had a similar situation. Except the blond man had muttered something about gangsters and a casino debt, but there was some line of sympathy between the two men as they sat down and dealt their cards.

"Twenty," Luxord hummed serenely as he set down his own.

Demyx's arching eyebrows quirked upwards, and as his eyes trailed over his opponent's cards, his shoulders sagged. With a sigh, he plopped backwards. "Damn. I can't win against you in a game of _luck._"

The gambler snorted in amusement and gathered up all his cards with a neat swipe of the hand, emptying them into his other hand and pocketing the deck. "Men make their own luck, Demyx," he spoke, "just like they make themselves." Pulling his feet beneath him to gain a centre of balance, he smoothly rose to stand and brushed imaginary dust from his slacks as he straightened out, towering over the blond musician. "And in some cases, they also make their own downfall," Luxord continued with a morbid smile. "It's been a good evening, but I'm afraid I should leave before I make myself late for other obligations."

"You're going?" Demyx murmured unhappily. Huffing, he sat back up, slouching and watching as one of the last few people on the theatre sauntered down the stairs. "That just leaves me and..."

"Me," Larxene intervened, platinum-blond head of hair suddenly cropping up from behind the satiny curtains, thin lips stretched over her exposed teeth in a manner somewhat reminiscent of the Chesire cat. "Good time to have a family reunion and catch-up, hm, Demyx?" she tittered, voice dripping like sugar-cane sap, before waving off at Luxord, "See you around, Lux!"

The older blond man gave a coarse laugh, waving at them both before ascending the auditorium stairs towards the exit.

Demyx blinked in surprise, gazing in Larxene's general direction as the young woman fiddled with the golden threads hanging from the borders of the curtain. "Larxene?" he all but croaked. All right- he'd noticed a great deal of people going and coming from the theatre over the course of the day, but Larxene had mostly kept to her little technician's box with it's wonderful view of everything else in the theatre, with what Axel told him was a great stack of highly questionable literature. She'd just disappeared from his mind at some point, and with less and less people remaining in the theatre he just came to assume she'd left. "You're still here?"

"Mm!" Larxene nodded, her locks of hair vivaciously bobbing with her head, before she trotted towards him. "Surprise you, kid?"

He exhaled, closing his eyes momentarily before opening them again, too wary to snooze in his cousin's presence. He of all people know how Larxene could be when she wanted attention. It took work to stuff back the slight terror that chilled his veins whenever he was in her presence, but he mostly rationalised the feeling with the fact that he'd been a kid all those times when his slightly older cousin had pranked him and led him into numerous misfortunes- some even involving cranky Uncle Hojo next door and his hanging signs that warned of gutting and other violent procedures. Certainly they were both adults now, but the deja vu could always strike. "Aw, not really," he said at last.

She smiled. "Liar," she said demurely, dropping to seat herself on the ledge of the stage, prodding his sneaker-clad foot. "You know, that slimy creep's wedding is this Sunday."

Uncle Hojo's wedding. The phrase sounded so wrong in itself. Demyx shifted his worn sneakers away from her, but slid to sit beside her. "Yeah, I know," he sighed, peering down at the small hole in his right shoe, "are you going?"

Larxene snorted. "Yeah, probably; I'm supposed to, anyway. I'm tied to the family business like it's a sinking ship. Family does shit, I've got to go along with it. Thinking of skipping out with some brilliant excuse about work or something, though it probably won't be easy slipping through. You, on the other hand, darling, are a free little twitty bird," she grumbed, gesturing in his general direction with a loose, flapping hand. "Going to some stinking wedding to extend your family influence over the society in general? That's totally up to you. Not like anybody's expecting you to."

"Well..." Demyx smiled bitterly, "I am."

"Huh?" the electrician blinked, stunned, and flicked her full attention to him, "Wait, what? _Why?"_

He shook his head, still smiling, unconsciously letting his hand trail up his leg and settle on the shape of Marluxia's phone in his pocket. Somewhere in those phone records was the time, duration and date of that call he'd taken, like a haunting remnant refusing to be ignored or forgotten. "Selphie. She wants me to try and patch things up with my folks."

Larxene laughed, a shrill sound that made Demyx wince whenever she made it. "Selphie? That _girl_- you're showing up there for her?" she cried, smacking him on the shoulder playfully, like she expected him to be making some sort of joke, "Dem, that's nice and all, but you're walking into the lion's den to save a kitten. You get what I'm saying, darling?" she asked, rubbing in her hand and its sharp nails, smiling in his general direction and burning her gaze into his memory.

Weakly, he thought of Zexion. Zexion had agreed to come, and stand by him as he faced his parents. Maybe- just _maybe_ this time, if his parents saw that he was happy as himself, happy with someone, just _happy,_ they would accept him. They'd say, _Hey, we've been trying to do what's best all this time, so maybe while he disagreed with us, he's well-off now, so it's not that bad. _Ends justified by the means, and they'd drop the ridiculous marine biologist topic and accept the gay musician they had for a son. He hoped.

"Zexion's going with me. He's going to help me show them," he smiled. "Prove to them that it all ended up for the best, even if it wasn't the kind they wanted."

His cousin looked at him for a long time, like she was trying to figure out if he was bluffing or not, and then she shrugged and stood up, looking like she'd given up on some sort of small battle in life. "Your funeral," she muttered, "I'm going home, Dem. Take care of that poor playwright Marlu while you're at it, and don't get yourself killed next Sunday. Zex... sure is a pick for someone to go out with," she grinned, flashing him a thumbs-up before sticking her hands into the pockets of her black-and-yellow form-fitting hoodie and skulking off, grumbling something about 'shitty weather can't make up its mind'.

"We're not-" Demyx called after her, but she was too far away across the auditorium and the words were lost with the sound of the beating rain on the roof of the theatre building. He dropped his hand and felt a flush climb up his neck and warm his cheeks. He watched her back, thinking back on what Axel said about her in the apartment garage, over the sound of beating rain and the metallic clinking of nuts and bolts. About what she'd did to Marluxia, about how there was supposed to be some disgust elicited in the back of Demyx's mind whenever he looked at his cousin- but Demyx felt nothing. Something ever-present in Larxene was depraved, he knew, but there again was her gift of knowing people; knowing the world.

Demyx helplessly groped the void of his emotional mind and could not grasp hate or disgust for Larxene. Perhaps because he got the feeling from her that she was doing something that she wanted to do, and living the life she wanted to live, with no unnecessary layers and masquerades conducted. He could have probably asked her about her history with Marluxia, to the level of whatever detail he specified, and she would have shrugged and told him.

As she disappeared behind the exit, he threw up his hands and sighed.

Why did everyone think that he and Zexion were together, anyway? It wasn't like- well, he liked the actor well enough platonically (disregarding how unkind he could be about his job), and the fact that it had ultimately been Zexion who'd influenced his life as a child was unforgettable, but sidled at the bottom of Demyx's stomach and chewing at it mercilessly was the fact that Zexion was a stranger. A troubled stranger who kissed away his pains and let him do the same, but still a stranger.

_ "Lexaeus and I have been friends since childhood. He... knows everything,"_ Zexion had said.

But what was 'everything'? Was 'everything' their confused, unspecified relationship? Or was it that Warfarin?

_ "This is quite the production. Zexion wants nothing more than its success... But it is not acting that he wants. Remember that. And accept him nonetheless."_

Why? Why the obsession, so set-in-stone that Zexion turned as unpleasant as curdled milk if his perfect career record was even slightly jeopardised, if he didn't even _like _acting? What concrete, driving motivation would keep him going, above the sleep disorders and pain, above the confusion, then? What kept him above the fatigue?

"_You are correct... He is tired. He's tired of acting and everything that entails it. Why do you suppose he's hanging around Marluxia and the script so much instead of practicing his pronunciation and honing his voice? He doesn't even like to act."_ Xemnas had said that, almost nonchalantly, like it was a given fact to him. What did the script have to do with it? And now that Demyx thought about it, it had been strange that Zexion alone had picked up the ruined pages of the script himself, like he had the intention to continue it on his own, and pick up the role as the playwright of _Final Limit._

Like Zexion would have rather been the writer all along.

Demyx groaned and ran a hand through his tousled mullet. No use thinking about it when all it did was bring about a headache.

His failed train of thought was further derailed by the magnificent slamming open of the front door, letting in the sound of the pouring rain outside and a well-time growl of thunder. Surprised, Demyx looked up from his shoes, gaze flung across the entire, dim theatre and its wide stretch of audience chairs, and blinked in surprise.

()(())()

Zexion stood, breathing heavily and tugging a dishevelled, dripping raincoat around his small body, at the entrance at the top of the stairs.

Demyx dropped off the stage, landing heavily at the bottom and staggering up the stairs towards him. "Zex!" he exclaimed, grinning, surprised and breathless, as he reached the top of the aisle and ran towards the shivering actor, pulling off the draping raincoat and checking Zexion over, quickly, from head to feet. Below his knees, the shorter man's jeans grew plastered tightly to his legs, darkened with dampness, and his dark boots made idle squashing noises as the water slowly bled out of them. Small spatters of water darkened the rest of his apparel, but the raincoat had evidently done a good job of keeping him mostly dry... But not warm. Zexion was pale and shivering.

"Zexion, what the heck are you doing here?" Demyx asked as he looked around desperately for something to drape around the actor and keep him warm, unable to keep the flustered smile off his face.

He was caught by surprise when Zexion lurched forth and pulled him into a bear hug, pressing them together as he did so, burying his head into Demyx's shoulder and breathing, deeply. The damp jeans brushed against his and the soggy boots made a squashing noise when they touched against his ragged sneakers. And yet Demyx didn't mind. Smiling, a little surprised, he patted the actor on the back. "Hey," he murmured against the damp locks of slate-blue hair, "you're a little late."

"I know," Zexion groused into his shoulder, "you really have no comprehension of what sort of procedures I had to carry through to sneak out on both Saϊx and Lexaeus's extraneous rigmaroles and make it to this godforsaken theatre. Lexaeus may have worked as a bodyguard for me at some points or others, but it seems like he's fallen into the habit of mother-henning..." Raising his head, he craned his neck and looked around the deserted, barely-lit theatre. "Where is everyone?"

"Gone home, man," Demyx grinned goofily, patting Zexion a little harder. He wondered if he was doing any good in warming the actor up. "How did you get away from those two, anyway?"

"Schemes were involved."

"Oh... kay. It's late now, you know that?"

He made a small, unhappy noise into Demyx shoulder. "You can't tell the time at all when all these clouds are covering up the sun," he grumbled. "Thank you... for the heat," he added awkwardly, almost as an afterthought, before pulled away and nervously plucking at the messenger bag over his shoulder, and picking up the still-dripping raincoat on the floor. Not meeting Demyx's eyes, he quietly set to folding up the wrinkled, dark blue synthetic fibres, holding them all at arm's length to keep from getting wet. The rings beneath his eyes seemed darker than usual, and his lifeless locks of hair hung weakly over his face even more today.

"Wow..." Demyx held his arms akimbo and remarked unabashedly, "You look beat."

"Do I?" Zexion snorted as he finished wrapping. "I was up late. Writing... I finished the climax," he announced, voice seeming to power up with pride as he stated his accomplishment. "I think... It's partway more decent than the one Marluxia wrote," he continued. "I wanted to see how it would look on stage, but as..." he trailed off, the spark of his blue eyes dimming as they looked at the deserted stage. They looked like they were calculating something, contrary to the disappointed look Demyx had been expecting.

The musician huffed and grinned wanly. "Hey, tomorrow's another day for rehearsal?" he suggested.

In the next moment, there was a handful of papers shoved into Demyx's arms, and he stared at them blankly as Zexion shuffled through his messenger bag, his skinny hand disappearing completely beyond the elbow as he all but ransacked the tough canvass bag's inside. Before long, he yanked out a small orange notepad and a cheap blue pen, thoughtfully looking between the messy ensemble of papers in the stunned musician's hand and the open pages of the palm-sized notepad. "Demyx," he said abruptly, looking up at him after an impolite moment, before saying quite seriously, "rehearse with me."

He froze on the spot, and some sheaves of paper fell out from his clumsy grasp. "Uh-" Demyx smiled warily, twitching in the slightest, as if he was innately questioning the actor's sanity, "uh, Zexion, it's late and-" he paused, seeing that he was being looked at quite intently, and flushed, "you're not kidding, are you?"

"I'm not jesting," Zexion agreed forcefully, "it's not been a productive day. Just- just read the script for one character out, I'll play the others; it's a rather minimalistic climax with less than four characters involved, it should not be difficult for me to switch between roles." His commanding tone slowly tapered off and he knelt before Demyx, picking up the lost scrap of printed script and looking at it thoughtfully, before looking up at him. "_'I know I don't know',_ Aristotle once said... Heh. Well, I know I don't know how this project will conclude if I'm the only one putting any sober, relentless effort into it, and if I don't know how the scenes I write will feel if I never see them played, even half-heartedly. Please, Demyx."

"Fine," Demyx's shoulders sagged in surrender, and he knelt as well, letting Zexion slip the paper into his arms once more. "You're really into this, aren't you?" he shook his head, looking resigned.

"Demyx, I don't want this play to fail. If we maintain this sort of pace, that is quite certainly the way it'll conclude itself- in failure," the actor near-growled, determined, before the hard facade slipped down and he looked at Demyx gently, murmuring, "I apologise. This is too demanding of me, isn't it?"

The musician grinned, feeling a small warming over his face, and looked away. "No, Zexion... thank you-" he stammered. "Hey, serious, you're saving everybody's butts with being the most determined one here." He shook his head, "This is my _job_, I really should give more of a darn about what we do. So yeah- let's do this." Resolvedly, he scanned over the paper and the lines of each character. "Not saying you're picking the right guy at all to do this with," he joked.

"You'll be fine; I just need to feel into the scene," Zexion said seriously, gazing into him with scrutiny before pulling in more distance between them, absentmindedly fidgeting with his opens hands against his torso and looking up at the stage. His dripping locks of hair obscured his eyes at the angle, making Demyx peer up from the papers and at the shining locks cautiously, and wonder what sort of look was glinting in those dark irises. "It's really deserted," the actor commented. He spoke distantly, oblivious to the fact that he was being observed.

"'_I'll always feel you in my blood, feel your running through me like pins in my circulation... your passion is so contagious and exhilarating,'..._" Demyx recited in a flat, un-thespian tone, taking a short breath between portions, surprised. "Geebuz... You _wrote_ all this?"

"Hm?" Zexion turned to look back at him, shaking his hair; momentarily, two wide, curious and dark-rimmed eyes blinked at him, before the slate-blue curtain of hair fell back down over his face, falling into an enigmatic mask once more. "Yes. Is it bad?" he asked. The reddish luminescent lights of the stage made him look like he was permanently flush-faced, and Demyx decided he didn't mind that.

He inhaled sharply, feeling the goose-bumps form over his skin as he rubbed the paper between his fingers, "Wow. I could _so _write a song for these kinds of lines. It's not hard to work with at all, but it's- okay, I'm rambling- Zexion, it's _great."_ Reading these lines full of passion and feeling, Demyx felt as if he was reaching in and catching sprinkles of the actual essence of the play itself- essences that he'd never picked up on ever before, even after seeing the overall plot being discussed numerous times. It was like the climax to _Final Limit_ was the saving grace of the entire play.

Zexion stared for a second, like he was scoping for earnestness and found it in a moment of surprise. "Thank God," he sighed and averted his eyes. Self-consciousness may or may not have flushed a light pink over his features; it was difficult to tell in the bad lighting. "If it wasn't decent, then there would really be quite a rut to be stuck in. I digress, there are still plenty of snags to smooth out in it..."

"Hey," Demyx assured, cocking his head to the thin walls and the roaring sound of rain beating relentlessly beyond them, both of them knowing that going out in that harsh weather at night was hardly a desirable option versus remaining in the humble shelter of the aged building, "the night's young."

Zexion just barely smiled, the look in his eyes softening ever so slightly. "You're right."

()(())()

After the customary greetings and salutations through the smother of yawns, Axel dropped his sports bag and undid his guitar strap, glancing around the theatre and muttering, "Jeebuz cripes on crepes and pancakes, Pink-ass really is gone." Nobody could be sure whether it was the awkward euphemistic exclamation or the nickname 'Pink-ass' that got him more glares. Ignoring the looks he garnered from the crew, the blazing redhead absent-mindedly snapped his rubber bracelets and scoped the theatre for Roxas.

He got a head-full of Demyx, instead. The blond toppled before him, aquamarine eyes not really seeing a thing and tousled mullet a little _too_ tousled to be stylish. With the growing new pair of eyebags, Demyx suddenly looked like he'd been experiencing the same level of sleep deprivation as the play's senior Sleeping Beauty himself. In the words of a redhead who'd enjoyed one too many shooter RPGs, he looked like a zombie. His typically perky stature was hunched over and he hung idly there, staring at the ground and trailing dark clouds of _sleepy, dying glooooom_ behind him. "Hey, Demyx-" Axel started to greet, only to be cut off by an incomprehensible groan. "Pardon?"

"Coffee..." Demyx repeated, drawing his head away and looking around blearily, as if he wasn't really aware of where he was. "Need... energy..." he moaned, voice a metallic, hollow little shred of its former self.

The redheaded musician raised a trimmed eyebrow, before slouching with a sigh and fishing through his back jeans pockets. After a moment of sifting, he grinned in triumph, pulling out three small black plastic wraps with solid squares cleanly outlines inside them. "Coffee candy's all I got. Man," he smirked, "did you get some or something? You look like you've been banging out- and _in-_ all night long."

Demyx's pale face flushed an unnaturally dark crimson and he snatched away the candies quickly, shaking fingers unwrapping and popping each one into his mouth. He sucked on them vigorously, contorting the soft flesh of his jaw area as he did so, averting his eyes. "I haven't been able to catch much sleep lately; composing," he explained, face still red a little as he pouted and stuck his hands into his pockets.

Axel grinned, satisfied with the embarrassed reaction. "I know. I was just kidding with you."

Like the coffee candy's sugar levels and caffeine extract was already taking effect, Demyx's wide shoulders perked up a little and he laughed weakly, "Geez, Axel, don't pick on me for stuff like that when _you're_ the sex machine here," and gave Axel a weak little jesting shove, before hovering away towards his bright blue sitar and mounting it into his arms. "Everybody here? Let's start rehearsing," he called as he plopped into the nearby stool in the musician's chair, eyes probing over the middle-sized mass of crew members. No one seemed to hear him. "C'mon... guuyyss..." he whined.

With a sigh of resignation, he mumbled something beneath his breath. Axel figured that with that look of defeat, Demyx had pretty much sealed the fact that today was going to be another _that_ day- another day when nobody would get anything done. How could they make any progress, anyway? Their scriptwriter and director, the only ones who really full-time pushed the crew into clockwork, had left the play to crumble into the dust, and their slave-driving lead actor was snoozing away in the backroom behind a door crankily labelled _'Janitor'_- _Final Limit_ was pretty much inching into the dark potholes of tribulations already.

"You'll probably need Marly's damned whistle to bring these guys out of oblivion, Dem," Axel said jokingly across the seats.

"Huh?" he murmured, looking at him with a strange, blank-slate look washing over his face, "huh, Axel, you know... I don't think I need it..."

And then, Demyx's eyes travelled over the auditorium, fixing on the backstage door when he seemed to have not found what he was looking for among the familiar faces of the crew. With an unfamiliar twisting line forming along his lips, the blond-brunette musician gave another small sigh and a tiny smile, and sauntered over towards one of the giant speakers that were located on either side of the stage.

Axel watched patiently, a little intrigued, as the musician's lanky figure lurched over the huge black speaker and gave small grunts as he pulled it back to expose the back area, and then reached his skilled hands and fingers along the wires, seeming to tweak the bass a little and play with a dozen other options. Demyx yanked out a few cables and replaced others, and then, plugs in hand, stumbled away, tripping on some of the wires clumsily before making it back to his sitar.

Kneeling before the prized, ornate instrument, he ran lovings hands over her shiny azure surface, and his tired eyes glinted with affection. His hands stopped when they seemed to find what they were feeling for, and Demyx popped open a small hidden compartment in the bottom side of his sitar, jamming in some of the wires.

_Wait a second here,_ Axel blinked, dumbfounded as he watched.

Demyx grinned satisfactorily and stood, remounting his sitar comfortably, and then he skipped towards the speaker and turned up the volume knob. He began crunching down on the coffee candy in his mouth, and pulling a pick from his worn back jeans pocket.

_Wait a sec, he never told me about this-!_

Axel, eyes wide, glanced over the rest of the crew and found them painfully unaware of what Demyx was doing- so much the better for _them-_ and promptly clapped his hands over his ears as Demyx took a breath and brought the pick to the strings.

..._Ofuck, he never told me it was an _**electric sitar-**

There was a wave of blasting sound that ripped right through the sleepy, thick air of the theatre, vibrating the very particles that were so unfortunate as to be located near the speaker systems, and Axel thought he could go deaf, have a heart attack, or both. And then, as soon as it came, the blast was gone, and the crew of _Final Limit _stared, jaws agape, at the musician standing at the core of the theatre just beneath the stage.

Demyx, unaffected by the sudden massacre of deafening noise that came and passed like an earth-shattering quake, readjusted his grip casually, and cleared his throat.

Then he proceeded to go through a long, intricate, and impressively skilful sitar solo, only in the hardcore throng of heavy _rock sitar_ sound, easing himself into posture as his right hand grew into nothing but a blur dashing across the strings and his left hand jerked mechanically against the neck of the sitar, pressing all the correct strings at all the correct times and literally _blowing away the rest of the theatre_ with the wonderful and deadly sound he produced.

The sitar solo was over with a heavy, demanding string of notes and then a high, loud finish. Some dumbfounded audience members didn't even bother bringing their hands to their ears to save themselves from the massacre. Meekly, Demyx relaxed out of posture, muttering a relieved "Whew!" and wiping at the sweat droplets as they ran down his flushed cheeks, grinning sheepishly when he saw that he had succeeded quite well in getting all eyes in the theatre on him.

"Heey..." he said, waving at everyone, "uh, now that I've got your attention, I just wanted to say something, okay? We may not have Marly with us right now, or even Xemnas, and Zexion's sleeping in the backroom right now... though I'm preeetty sure I just woke him up- but, er, whatever!" he breathed. "Just because they're not here with us right now, that doesn't mean we the _Final Limit_ crew can't kick proverbial _ass_, okay, guys?"

Slow nods and quiet, shell-shocked murmurs of agreement echoed like weak little after-quakes after a 9.2 disaster on the Richter Scale.

"Awe-_some_," Demyx's grin turned earnest and his eyes sparked with buzzing, adrenaline-and-sugar-induced energy. "Soo... let's get this play movin'!"

Slowly, the _Final Limit _crew submitted and cheered, smiling like they weren't sure of what to expect, but that was enough; to Demyx, that already exceeded satisfying. The crew already had talent, and if the ball was rolling, if they had enough momentum, they would make the show a success by a landslide.

It would be beyond any of the deprecating expectations of the sponsor companies or audience. And where motivation failed them, they had Zexion as the sturdy, precise anchor, pressing continually onwards.

And now they had Demyx.

He hoped to do all he could to make this work, because somewhere along the way, _Final Limit_ had ceased to be an arbitrary source of income for him. He wasn't sure if he ever saw it as such to begin with, but now he knew for sure: _Final Limit _had crept in and taken some of his affection, and it could keep it. Demyx was attached to the play for everything he was, now, and he wasn't backing down come hell or high water.

_**end of chapter eleven**_

_**

* * *

**_

_**A/N: Annnddd... I am uncertain of what to say, except thank you for bearing with me this far.****  
Did you notice, Scripted is about to get 69 reviews? Hurr hurr hurr~  
Kindly leave one. You probably already know, but they're a wonderful pleasure to read, constructive criticism and muses alike!**_


	13. Chapter 13

_**A/N: Haiii~ How's it going? Roawr, still getting over the wake of AkuRoku day, or are you not celebrants? Basking in the summer? It's clear and cold and rainy over here. Heh.**_

_**Thank you all so much for your generous reviews! And a special cookie for InjuUchiha, who was lucky enough to get review number Zemyx. I'm sorry I have so little to offer you beyond e-cookies D:**_

_**Review Responses:  
luckless-is-me: **I thank you, and few others, for being such a regular reviewer for my fic! Glad to hear you still like how and where I'm taking this.  
**Burning-x-Innocence: **Yup, he got to write! Finally what he wanted. Hurr hurr~  
**Taida Hokori:** Great! :D Stay in that good mood. You might need it.  
**Besieged . Infection: **Hurr hurr hurr, electric sitars really do exist, too. When I heard about their existence, I thought that I would seriously have to incorporate that into a story.  
**Dream Me Asleep: **It always occurs to me that those two really like their huggles. Eheh. So cool, hearing all the positive reception that sitar's getting!__**  
aisarete: **Thank you so much! Your support means a lot to me!_

_**Enjoy this quick chapter.**_

_**

* * *

**_

_**Chapter Twelve**_

The ticks on the calendar on the whitewashed wall told Demyx that it was _that Sunday, _like a sickly, stark confirmation of that dread that washed over him. The quiet, diligent snappish sounds of the second hand on the clock just above the calendar told him that it was one in the afternoon, and he had slept for far too long. Groggy, blank-minded and heavy with sleepiness, he dragged himself across the dusty, claustrophobic space of the apartment, towards the even messier kitchen.

He could lie about it all he wanted to concerned enquirers, but in truth Marluxia's absence made things hard. With no roommate to absent-mindedly chide him to clean up, do the laundry and eat regular meals, Demyx's home lifestyle quickly fell into a sedentary one solely dependent on instant, take-out and delivery food. The bills were mostly fended off for November, but November could only last so long, and Demyx's last visit to the A.T.M. proved one thing to him: He was very low on money. As in, he had enough to eat and maybe pay for the generous water bill, but constant electricity was out of the question. It seemed pretty solid that he would only have lights until the end of the month.

Ten thousand munny only got you so far, and Demyx was quick to understand that his blessing of electricity may not last so long. Sidled and still in plastic bags in the hallway were his recent purchases from Scrooge's Department Store: candles, torches, hand-fans, and a surplus stock of several types of batteries, all the cheapest brands that he could wrap his skinny, string-calloused hands around.

So, in the end, he had seven thousand munny leftover. Two thousand on all the things that would keep him going without a ceiling fan and lights, another thousand on canned and instant food. A year ago he would have used the same three thousand munny on useless purchases and expensive quality products, but right now the sense of urgency and sudden self-dependence made him think better of buying the higher-quality alternatives.

Just because he'd grown some sense to not splurge the last of his savings didn't mean he grew any less lazy. The dishes accumulated in the sink, a small white layer of dust was slowly blanketing spots of the flat he didn't commonly use- and the note Vexen had left him still remained tacked on the pillar from days ago, yellowing slightly in the sun:

_"Marluxia is staying with me."_ A string of numbers that was supposedly the scientist's phone number ended the note. No formalities, no 'take care of yourself', not even a 'water the plants in his room, or else' notice. If a paper could properly transmit feeling, the note would aureate frigid coolness. Demyx didn't mind. He walked by it and gave it a small, respectful thought before going about his way.

Marluxia's room was closed, like the room of someone who had passed away, but Demyx had been entering it quite frequently since the playwright had disappeared from the flat. Gone was the smell of floral plant-life and in its place was the stuffy, heavy air and the smell of fermenting fertiliser. Demyx didn't know how to take care of Marluxia's plants, and he figured he'd just screw it up somehow- but that didn't stop him from coming in once a day and emptying a cup-full of water into each vase, in a poor but earnest attempt to take care of the things. (His roommate had once attempted to inform him on the basics of plant maintenance, but Demyx didn't get anything beyond the fact that 'plants need water and sunlight', and even then he had no idea at which intervals and of what volume he should supply said water and sunlight.)

But he didn't mind that very much. He had the worrisome fact that it was Sunday and only a few hours until the wedding reception to deal with. If Marluxia was to disappear from the apartment for an indeterminate amount of time, he'd just... deal.

Sure, he was plagued with the rock-heavy thought: What if Marluxia _never_ came back? What if the pink-haired man never crawled out of the rut he'd fallen into, and clung on to Vexen like a hapless invalid for the next few years? Perhaps that day when Vexen crossed a sharp slap on Demyx's face and carried his boyfriend out had been the last day the two of them would ever enter the theatre. Those were the sorts of troubling thoughts that kept Demyx paused over his work, twirling the blunt pencil in his fingers, until the deepest hours of the night. Ever since that evening spent rehearsing with Zexion, he hadn't had a good night's sleep. He spent so much energy on the play, and on worrying, that these days he was, in a way, _too tired_ to go to_ sleep_.

Demyx prepared instant coffee without any cream or sugar, and inhaled the wet air of the afternoon day. "It's going to rain today, huh?" he said to the cool, sweet air, feeling the buzz of the restless weather settle deep in his chest like a cold, metallic vibration. He felt today's climate like an electric current running in his veins, even more acutely than on most days. He breathed deeply as the warm aroma of coffee drifted towards him from his old mug, "Good. Rain on the wedding. Totally fits Hojo."

He nearly jumped in surprise when Marluxia's telephone began to ring, vibrating noisily in its charger on the kitchen countertop, spouting a tinny, monaural epic piano-and-rock-guitar instrumental tune from small speakers. Hastily setting down the hot coffee mug, Demyx strolled towards it and flipped it open, bracing himself- Marluxia's phone had brought him nothing but misfortune and streams of inquisitive strangers. The man was even more social than he had ever been aware.

_"Hello, good afternoon. Would this be Demyx?"_

Zexion.

He breathed the actor's name into the speaker without even realising it. "H-hey," he sighed, like the relief was pouring out from his chest, and then he grinned. Even though there wasn't anybody to see him grin like that, Demyx believed in sounding_ and _looking happy on telephone. "Hey! You're sounding perky."

There was pause on the line, and the sound of Zexion breathing shallowly, like he'd been running. _"How are you faring?"_ he asked after a moment.

Demyx bit his lip. "I'm good- wait, no- that's a lie. Um... I'm terrible," he laughed shallowly. "No lies. I feel like my stomach's gone and turned inside out."

Another deep pause. More breathing. He sounded just as nervous and jittery as Demyx was. _"A day can only last so long. Are you getting ready?"_

"Y-yeah... You, uh, chill out too," he stammered. "Getting ready? Uh. No. I... just got up."

_"Please... don't be lazy."_

"Heeey. I'm not," Demyx protested. "Look, I pick you up at- that place- in an hour, right?" He couldn't remember the specific name of the street or sector of the island city for the life of him, but Zexion had told him last Friday that it was located near the convention centre, a ways down the road from the theatre and the old food court. He could only guess that the actor lived around that area.

_"Yes... I'll see you in an hour."_

Demyx felt as if he wanted to say more, but the tone cut into his words a moment later. He looked at the phone, feeling strangely empty, and slipped it back into its charging cradle. What was that call all about, anyway? Zexion had sounded strange on the line, like his very voice was trembling and thoughts were running rampant like a battlefield in his brain, but he guessed that the actor was just as nervous as he was.

"Da-yung..." Bemoaning the fate set before him all the while, the musician drank the last of his bitter coffee (and didn't resist cringing as the taste latched itself onto his tongue), set the mug down and stumbled off to dig out that old, moth-eaten suit he was sure he had buried like a corpse somewhere in the deeper corner of his wardrobe. He may have as well started looking for Narnia.

He thought of Zexion's words: _"A day can only last so long_." He thought about how wrong that could be at times, and how surprisingly optimistic the man was being to bring the fact up.

()(())()

"How long are you going to keep this up?" Lexaeus asked reproachfully as he watched Zexion down the Diazepam.

The young man dropped his hands from his face, trembling fingers wrapping around the slender, clear glass of water on the coffee table. As soon as he drank it, he clumsily slipped it back upon the table and fell back into the grey-and-blue striped couch, quaking gaze un-fixedly gazing outside his window. It was only the second floor, but Zexion's apartment had a fair view of the well tended-to flora of the cemetery he lived near to. "And you, Lexaeus," he said slowly, enunciating every syllable warily, as if even the professional actor in him was worried that he'd slur, "how long are you going to neglect your clinic in order to allocate time for me? You've wasted enough time keeping me at home one day. Preparing breakfast for me. Generally..._ fussing_." He spoke as bitterly as he allowed himself to, not out of general irritation for the man, but more or less concern. Lexaeus's career would suffer for his sake if this foolishness persisted.

Lexaeus looked at him stonily and answered, "As long as you continue to flounder about in the dark as you are doing. I thought this Demyx was doing well for you."

Zexion's eyes narrowed. "Must you and Saϊx relate every other event to Demyx?"

"You're the one harbouring the affection for the man, not I. And he is not a bad person as far as I was able to judge. I am merely... surprised."

"He doesn't need to know I have... fantasies about him, that I'm _still_ writing that godforsaken manuscript, and that I'm not any happier at meeting his parents than he is. They'll judge me, Lexaeus, surely they will," he said snappishly, all the while bringing a quaking hand to his head and nursing it. It seemed like the medicine was setting in, as his movements were gradually growing more relaxed... sluggish, even.

"This is the first time I've seen you worried about anyone but your own parents judging you," Lexaeus commented off-handedly as he headed to the kitchen to prepare some tea. Zexion's kitchen stock was diminished and lacking in some sections, but the impersonal and staggeringly clean space was shockingly abundant in its supply of tea. Thank goodness they both liked the same brew. "Can you not just craft a plot of sorts to ease yourself out of the rendezvous?"

The jittery nervousness bubbled up in Zexion again and the man restlessly set his fingers against his lips in serious thought. "No," he insisted at last, "that would just be callous to Demyx."

"You've never before been concerned with whom your schemes offended," Lexaeus remarked once more as he set about heating the water kettle over the shiny, aged stove. The effect of Zexion's schemes never escaped anyone, not even himself, but he'd grown numb towards them and understood that they were the ways of the small man. Words such as act, facade, illusion, scheme and ploy were not ones that he didn't associate with Zexion. Sheer will and _schemes_ were what pulled the young man through the jungle of the entertainment industry, after all.

It was a pity that the merciless schemer himself was so overcome by anxiety these days that he had to take mood regulators to maintain the mask. Lexaeus's stony, set face deepened into a far-reaching frown as he poured the tea into two separate cups. Zexion, seated on the couch, had picked up _Metamorphosis_ from where it sat in the mahogany bookshelf beside the seats, and his fingers trembled and had problems turning the pages.

"He rebels against his parents, too, you know," Zexion mused, "because they want him to be something he isn't."

()(())()

In the end, Demyx unearthed a soulless grey suit jacket and slacks, and settled with that and a much crisper, white dress shirt beneath the ensemble. He contemplated wearing one of the few ties he owned, a black-and-white satin one with a musical motif, but thought better of it- ties, ultimately, sucked with their itchy, strangling grip, in his point of view. His hair, he decided, wasn't going to get any special treatment for the day- a relatively traumatic incident years back, involving a brush and a bucket of water, had persuaded Demyx to never attempt taming his faithful mullet. It was eventually going to suffer enough mussing-up beneath his motorcycle helmet, anyway.

He left the apartment at five past two, keys jangling noisily from his hand as he rolled the rusting iron gate shut. After slipping on his old, softened leather fingerless gloves, Demyx pressed the elevator button for the ground floor and proceeded to sift through the lint in his slacks pockets for his motorcycle key. Fishing them out and depositing his apartment keys, he whistled softly, nervously, fidgeting as he twirled the new key and its electric blue keychain about on his slender index finger.

The elevator dropped down fifteen floors in the course of a few faltering seconds, but with the feeling of gravity working its magic and the knowledge that he was _falling, falling, falling_, encased in these six metallic, old-smelling walls like a prisoner in a freefalling case of glass made Demyx's heart beat in his throat.

When he finally pulled out of the apartment parking lot and deliberately roared his large blue, glittering model through and out of those silent, secretive concrete confines, Demyx felt the wind hit his bare fingers and let the nausea crumble away with it. Stopping the bike still-humming just before the apartment security gates, he slipped on his midnight blue helmet, keeping another spare strapped around the head of the bike. He kicked out, deliberately revving up the vehicle, like every nervous burst of his soul went with the smooth rotations of the engine. _Whatever Axel did to this girl when he did that maintenance..._ he thought appreciatively, _he did it well._

Demyx never drove with as much emotion as he did that afternoon. Slipping and weaving intricately between the cars on the wide, dusty road, he pressed on. His undone suit jacket fluttered out to the wind that breezed through his body, he leaned over and felt the speed and the millions of rotations of the wheels against the coarse gravel, and he leaned with purpose at every turn, eyes burning beneath the safe shield of the anonymous, tinted helmet.

When he finally braked to a stop just at the bus stop that he was pretty sure Zexion was referring to, he could figure out why he was out of breath and a cold line of sweat trickled down his neck and into the padding of the helmet. He glanced up and to the side, and found the actor himself standing, arms crossed, glaring.

And though Zexion was glaring, the first thing Demyx did after he pulled off his helmet and took a breath was grin and say, "You, look, _great_ in a suit."

Which was somewhat justifiable, because Zexion _did._ The regular platform boots were gone, replaced by a smart-looking pair of proper, expensive-looking men's' shoes. And instead of a boring formal suit jacket, he wore a light grey button-up shirt that fit obscenely well, looked crisp and ironed, and gave Demyx a view of his pale neck and well-defined clavicles- _dammit_. While he'd barely bothered to tame the messy locks of slate-blue hair that fell over his eye, the midnight-blue eye that remained exposed glared quite vehemently and only added a special touch to the general ensemble.

Those lips opened wide in a small circle, relaxed, puckered, extended, squared, and finally clenched in the space of a few moments.

And then Demyx realised that he'd been talking.

"I doubt that's relevant... especially with how _you_ look the part of a gangster, in a suit and fingerless gloves," he'd said, seething softly beneath the still facade of his flesh. It caught what little light hung through the hovering clouds and seemed to radiate with just that. "A tardy gangster."

Demyx smiled sheepishly, and confessed, "Oosh. Okey. Sorry- I'm late," raising two hands in playful surrender, before unstrapping the spare helmet around the neck of his bike and offering it to the actor.

Zexion just shook his head in resignation, accepting the light beige helmet and pulling it over his head. He stopped mid-action, sniffing thoughtfully and wincing, before looking at Demyx with squinting blue eyes and a slightly pained clench to his lips, "It reeks... of floral shampoo."

"No, it doesn't reek of floral shampoo... It reeks of Marluxia," Demyx corrected, explaining peevishly, "that one's his." Zexion didn't move still, and with a sigh the musician switched around the helmets, handing his own to the shorter man and watching as he accepted it and strapped it on silently. Feeling his nervousness and adrenaline high slowly washing away, he smiled to himself and slipped on the traded beige helmet, blinking in surprise as his senses were briefly assaulted with the standard, sweet scent he _did_ usually associate with the pink-haired man. A little pained, Demyx bit his lip and shook away the feeling, though his wished he could breath a little better. "Come on," he looked at Zexion and patted the seat behind him.

The actor hesitated, seeming to look over the huge, glistening metal of the vehicle.

"I won't kill us both with bad driving, I promise," Demyx joked, and this seemed to let Zexion relax enough to comply and slowly climb onto the vehicle. After an awkward pause, Demyx shook his head and smiled, taking the actor's stiff, small hands from where they rested rigid against his sides and wrapping them around his torso. At Zexion's puzzled stillness and the unmoving uncertainty of those hands hovering over his ribcage, he snorted a small laugh. "I don't want you to fly off," he explained softly, before he revved up the motorcycle, took a breath, and kicked off, melding into the traffic.

On the long ride across the island, Demyx didn't tell Zexion that he was so skittish, and so afraid, that his heart was clenching and beating in his mouth and his fingers shivered whenever he even slightly loosened his grip around the handlebars.

But then again, Zexion didn't tell Demyx about how he had the pleasant scent of crisp sea breeze and lightly of sweet tropical fruit, or of how he could feel every single shudder and his beating heart against his palms, versus the whipping wind against the upsides of his hands.

()(())()

It was a fast-paced ride, albeit a long one, which Zexion eventually spent with his head rested against the curve of Demyx's back, watching the scenery pass them by as the island city's slow-growing corporate buildings and residential zones gradually gave way to foresty land and seaside vegetation. They left the industrial southern side through the open highway, zooming along at unrestricted speeds, feeling like they'd bulleted together and become the force of wind itself. Clearly familiar with the island, Demyx made a smart, leaning turn at one point, opting to take the clearer, more isolated hillside route around the heart of the island-city instead of cutting directly through the centre of population itself.

Finally they slowed down and met the seaside once more, driving along the now-winding, snaking and narrow road that led to the much more scenic northern front of the island. Zexion relaxed, breathing deeply in an attempt to calm himself as the vehicle scaled the steep curves of the trail, watching the shimmering sea and how nothing, absolutely nothing was visible beyond it but menacing blankets of clouds.

The motorcycle halted, pulling over on the narrow road just as a small high-class neighbourhood came into view, peering out from along the verdant stretch of trees and rocky terrain. Demyx gave a sigh, parking the bike on that inconspicuous little niche, popping off his helmet and sitting straight, explaining to his riding partner, "Don't want them to see me arrive..."

Zexion slowly clambered off, feeling a small wave of sleepiness hang over him but pushing it back, breathing in the damp, rain-scented air as soon as he removed his own helmet. As he fixed his dishevelled, stray strands of fine slate-grey hair, he could vaguely hear distant chatter and smell the aroma of barbecue coming from the neighbourhood area- that must have been the wedding reception. He almost wanted to say something lame, like _'So, we're here..._', but he bit back his words when he cast a glance at the blond-haired musician.

Demyx was fidgeting, staring blankly at the houses, running his still-gloved hands nervously through his mess of a mullet and absent-mindedly working at restoring it to its gelled glory. His expression was tense, and his lips pursed with a darker sort of hesitation than Zexion had ever observed before- even when they first conversed and argued, he'd never seen Demyx so wound-up. And even then, the musician never silently sat back and fidgeted like that, still seated on his motorcycle as if he was ready to change his mind and hightail out of there any moment then.

"They're all there," he said, gaze still fixed on one of the houses: the one with the steely-grey roof and most decayed paintjob of the shining row, Zexion observed. Biting his lip, he continued, "They call me _Myde._"

"I was born Ienzo, and kept the name until I was fourteen," Zexion pointed out calmly.

"Yeah," he agreed, distant gaze turning back to look at him, "but it's not quite the same. They called me... that... and they still call me that. I only dropped the name when I pretty much disowned them, and that was college. College age isn't the same as fourteen."

"Yes, well, I suppose I didn't have the right to make that point anyway. You disowned them, I disowned myself," he shrugged. "Is there anything I should particularly know before we press onwards, Demyx?" he asked almost politely, even as the name _Myde_ danced on the edge of his mind when he looked at the young man, who still had yet to shift away from the motorcycle seat, even though he'd long killed the engine.

Demyx blinked vaguely, before shaking his head, closing his eyes... breathing stable, making Zexion realise how lost his own breath was. "Yeah and... not just the Myde thing... Er. My parents didn't really expect or like the fact that I was gay, either. You should probably know all the assumptions they're gonna make when we walk in." He smiled without much enthusiasm. "And though I didn't recognise you at first from the films I saw when I was a bratty little kid... Well, they probably will. And... they won't like it one bit."

"I see... Quite the handful of things to be aware of... And you only thought to inform me just now?"

"Hey," he protested to the cold tone, finally swinging his legs out and rubbing his backside as he made it to his feet, mumbling something as he pulled out the bike keys and worked on securing the vehicle, "it's been a busy week. _I_ was too busy thinking about how they'd be flaying _me_ alive and dipping me in hot oil to think about how they'd jump on you."

"Demyx..."

"I know, I know," he sighed. "The goal is to make peace with them... I know. I'm only doing this for my little sis, Selphie... It's just-"

"Colloquially speaking, a 'pain in the ass'?"

"Heh." Demyx's lips upturned in a surprising smile. "Yeah, that, pretty much. You ready?"

"I _have_ been ready." Zexion crossed his arms. "As your friend... I won't let them hurt you."

_As your friend._ The words reverberated in whispers of wind between them. It made Demyx think of the text message still safely stored in his phone, warm in his pants pocket: "_Demyx- Be it a wedding or to meet your parents or both, as your friend I would happily go with you anywhere should you only need me to..." _It made Zexion think about how much of a pain and an ecstasy it was to grate out the word '_friend'_ when he was looking at Demyx.

_**End of Chapter Twelve  


* * *

**_

_**A/N: So, uh, how'd you like it? Cough cough. Actually, this chapter used to be really frickin' huge, but I decided that I didn't need readers with eyestrain, so I cut it down to a slightly more readable transition.  
Also, I'm contemplating posting up a little explanation about the nature Scripted, the soundtrack I compiled for it, and a deleted scene from chapter eleven up on my creative journal, but firstly, would anybody actually be interested in that? I mean, if not, I won't really worry about it. Just let me know. :D  
I'll spoil you now: We're very close to the end. In celebration, the next update will come... Wednesday! If all goes well. : )  
**_

_**Kindly drop a review and tell me what you think!  
**_


	14. Chapter 14

_**Chapter Thirteen**_

_Well,_ Zexion thought to himself as he walked side-by-side with Demyx down the pavement before the rows of expensive, large houses, _it could be worse. It could have been a formal, ballroom affair. _His arms were stiff by his side as he raised his head, assessing each and every house that they passed. They were all three-storey affairs with fair-sized lawns and gardens and ornate, motorised gates. C.C.T.V. cameras peered eerily out of a number of them. Obviously nothing that most middle-class members of society could afford, especially on the space confinements of the island. Each and every home boasted unique, classy architecture and the promise of wealth; any middle-classer would find their pockets a black hole of negative space and misery should they attempt to own and maintain one of them. Zexion himself was not aching for money, but the mere look of them made him cringe a little.

Silently and abstractly he mused to himself, wondering which house Demyx may have grown up in. He'd not known that the taller man had had such an upper-class upbringing, but he supposed it really should have figured. Demyx's carefree, easygoing ways did not exactly scream of someone who'd suffered poverty and misery, and neither did the sharp, well-formed curves of the man's body and his flawless olive skin and- _all right, Zexion, enough of that._ Well, little tics on the musician's self did point to a good, albeit probably meticulous upbringing.

His sensitive noise picked up the light musk of wedding perfumes, blended incongruously with the appetising scent of barbecue chicken.

Tentatively redoing a button on his shirt and covering the upper exposed sector of his chest from the chilly breeze, Zexion pried his gaze away from the houses, instead trudging straight ahead until Demyx stopped him. "Thiiss is it," he said, wincing away, before faking a grin and saying, "you sure walk fast!"

Zexion almost mechanically halted, turned, and looked.

The house before him was the most dreary one on the lot, seeming to be weeping beneath the cloak of dark sky, but it was easy enough to recognise that _some _sort of gathering was occurring. (Although he may have thought it a much more sober event if he didn't know it was a wedding.) It was a two-floor house with an old grey paint job, curtained windows. Wary barbed wire and glass shards lining the columnar walls (which wailed like banshees for a new paint job, peeling and cracked and moulded as they were), and the baleful, open iron gates looked less like iron and more like a brittle little structure iron oxide, ready to turn to dusty, rusting tatters if one only exerted a tiny bit of extra force on them. The lawn plant life was long dead and gone.

Elderly and middle-aged men in suits waddled about with champagne in their hands, and stiff steeples of women with caked-on makeup talked hush-hush with each other behind props like little fans or their own flapping, bony hand. The remaining crowd was a sombre, unspeaking crew in black-and-white suits, fit, standing rigid, and staring about warily- the sort of crew which kept their black glasses on at every hour of the day and had a gun holster hidden beneath their nice suits. Zexion knew this type of crowd well enough- a crowd of upper-class liars who took solace in slander and back-stabbing, attending just another klatch. High figures and all the sycophants to cluster about them. It reminded him vividly of the entertainment industry.

No merry decorations were in sight, though the out-of-place, multicoloured tablecloth over the snack table in the middle of the dead lawn was a good attempt at lightening the mood. A smoking barbecue roasted away, supervised by a tanned, bald man whose face was as stony as Lexaeus's and whose eyes were completely obscured behind black glasses. Like the other half-dozen people of the 'sober secret-agent' crew Zexion was slowly noticing more and more, the man wore an extraneously boring suit, and even seemed to have added a tie as a personal touch.

_Disgusting._

The already gloomy, hushed crowd grew silent as the grave when, one by two by twenty they quickly grew to notice the two young men standing just at the gate. Demyx gulped audibly. Zexion masked his own cringe. Certainly he was used to having thousands of pairs of eyes on him at a time, but the wordless, hollow look they gave out then made his blood run cold beneath his skin.

There was a certain different, undesirable way of being the centre of attention, and he was quickly learning of it.

Calmly, he reached out and gripped Demyx's hand very tightly in his own. "Come. We should congratulate the bride and the groom," he said sharply, pulling on the secure grip he held on those dry, long fingers and yanking Demyx along. He practically walked them both down the lawn, past some of the silent, gaping pairs of _eyes._

Demyx made a surprised, choking noise, attempting once to slip his hand out of the grip, but only succeeding in getting it objectively squeezed further, until he made a tiny, suppressed rasp of pain in the back of his throat.

"Play along," Zexion hissed into his ear once they stood on the concrete doorsteps, quickly pretending to press a kiss to his temple, "and bring us to the betrothed before all else."

Without a sound, Demyx slowly nodded, eyes fixed downwards. He flinched away from the heated space between them and hastily started into the house, leading them both by their intertwined hands. The dark interior of the house surrounded Zexion around each other, secure like lock and key.

He found them both slow to a stop, following Demyx's gaze and seeing a man, aged and bony, and a woman, tall and stunning in an agreeable, womanly way- both clad in pristine white and with nothing but cloudy, restless flickering behind their glazed-over eyes. Judging from the look in them, it was as if a wedding was some sort of annoying procedure that they'd both rather have over without much ceremony.

Understanding that this strange couple must have been the betrothed, Zexion painted on his most gracious smile with the best of his acting abilities, standing behind Demyx as the musician spouted nervous well-wishes and congratulations. He was aware of it when Demyx's hand slipped out of his to shake with the groom, and how the blond fidgeted when he awkwardly touched the bride's shoulder to greet her. Zexion only had to step in to introduce himself, still smiling, shaking hands with both the bride and groom, inwardly wondering whether there was any real love in this funereal wedding reception, and whose tragic idea was it to have a party for it to begin with. From the looks of it, the brittle, greasy-haired, glasses-wearing groom was not quite the celebratory type- Zexion restrained from wincing when he caught the putrid stench of heavy chemicals clinging to the man.

Zexion was only snapped out of his conveniently blurry procession of events and observations by the sound of Demyx awkwardly complimenting the layout of the party. Good, he'd stuck around for long enough- time to make an escape and leave Demyx to feel around the party for himself for a while. "Should I get us some champagne?" he softly suggested.

The look Demyx flashed him was almost panicked, like he was crying out into the air between them, _What are you doing!_

Smiling widely and flipping his hair out of his face momentarily, Zexion reached his hands to the wide, sharp shoulders of the musician, firmly massaging his fingers against the supple curves of that body. It took a mountain of self-control not to be more tender with his touch, or to let the gesture turn out as erotic. "You're all wound up from the long drive... _dear,_" he said saccharinely, laying on the loving tone like sticky, heavy and excessive volumes of honey. Flashing a meaningful smile at the silent bride and the groom, Zexion made good use of Demyx's shocked silence and quickly carried out his personal escape from the area.

_Back into the masses of gawkers with little old me._

Making his way outside towards the out-of-place snack table, he fanned himself lightly with his black collar, thankful. The table was stocked well enough, making good use of un-expressive stainless steel bowls to contain numbers of finger food and some candies, a dozen empty and clean wineglasses and drink dispensers at the ready. _Decent enough, though the entire thing looks terribly slapped-together,_ Zexion mused critically. He found a half-full bottle of white wine, not champagne, sitting among the amphigorous ensemble.

Lifting two tall glasses from the stock, Zexion set to very carefully pouring out two glass-fills into the respective ups, face blank and eyes fixed firmly on the clear, non-effervescent drinks. To look anywhere else was to make eye contact with someone- his stomach churned a little. For a while he pretended to examine the year and company of the wine- just cheap table make- more or less just wasting time, casually maintaining a tiny façade of protection from the burning looks he felt fixed on him.

_ Certainly, gape at the actor... Like pigeons..._

Zexion did not even move when a heavy, gruff voice obtruded into the bubble he was so carefully maintaining, rudely throwing the referral his way: "_You._"

_Could be someone else being addressed, _he thought placidly, turning the bottle in his hands skilfully. In fact, he really did hope it was someone else being addressed, even though it'd been fairly evident that the unpleasant voice had been calling his way.

"Ienzo Ishida."

Slowly he halted turning the bottle, and very carefully forced away the quaver that overcame his nerves as he placed it down.

Who-?

Something sour burned in the base of his eye sockets. No one had had the _gall_ to address him by that name in years. No one.

Looking up and turning, he trembled a little as he plastered on his smile again, eyes unseeing as he forced out the salutation, "Hello, sir. I'm afraid I don't go by that name anymore."

The man standing before him was huge, his muscular frame outline sharply by his dark suit. Bushy brows and a familiar curve of the nose, and a shade of deep brown hair that Zexion had long engraved into his memory- the actor took in all these features as he watched the man chuckle darkly, voice coming out like a low rumble of earth. "I wouldn't think so, after that wonderful poisoning incident, would you?" he said mirthfully, like there was something amusing about a mass-murder, contempt flickering like a plague in his eyes.

Zexion vaguely wondered who this man was and why he was so _hateful_- and then slowly, taking in each feature one by one and de-constructing it quickly in his capable mind, he realised.

"Do you know, once we read about it in the news, my wife and I sighed with relief? We thought, we'd never have to put up with your family making any more of those disgusting films- no, not just that, we'd never have to put up with your family's existence. We thought you died, and that made us infinitely happy. We were not very pleased with your sullying ways, young Mr. Ishida."

Zexion felt something like a thick string in the core of his chest stretch at the sound of those words, and the heavy baritone (_that echoed familiarity) _which spoke them.

The man continued, grinning, even as the slivers of something Zexion recognised and loved flashed in that cold grin._ It's like watching a slew of coarseness with tiny shards of something wonderful pouring out of a dark tunnel drain, _the actor thought to himself weakly, trying to maintain his frozen smile even as pain and anger flitted like buzzing insects in the deep of his brain. The man opened his mouth again, confirming Zexion's sickest fear, "I saw you came in here with my son."

_Of course. Your son. Your beautiful __son.__ Your beautiful son, who, as long as I live, I will never comprehend how or why you cast out._

He did not tremble, did not dare himself to move should his quivering self-control snap like violin strings on the spot. He politely awaited anything else the man looked very ready to say.

The words never arrived, however, as a smiling, wondrously tall, woman with blonde, white-streaked hair glided towards the man, touching his shoulder. Every movement with her was a fluid, natural gesture, and her draping soft grey dress moved with her- the sort of woman whose beauty shone through even years after she had long passed her peak in life. "Dear, Mr. Hojo would very much like you to..." and trailed off, her vibrant, _familiar again_ green eyes slowly fixing on Zexion and that open look of recognition dawning over her.

"You," she murmured, slowly raising a finger to point at him.

"Mom, Dad?"

_Like a play with an excessive amount of actors,_ Zexion mentally groused as he turned. He looked down and his eyes found the brown ones of a teenage girl, wearing an almost lurid orange dress and peering between him and the couple (her _parents,_ didn't that make her...?) curiously. "Hey, who's this?" she asked, oblivious to the way they were looking at him- like he was some sort of whore selling his services to anyone who so much as looked.

"Selphie- Zexion-"

Zexion turned again, seeing Demyx racing out from the front door to the small gathering that was forming in the centre of the lawn. He must have only just made his getaway.

Wide-eyed, the brown-haired adolescent exclaimed, "_Myde!_ You really _did_ come!"

He father's massive hand clapped over her shoulder in the next moment, though, and the girl froze in the middle of reaching her arms out in a stance ready for an embrace. "Selphie," the father growled dissuadingly. And she reluctantly complied, something frightened flashing momentarily in her eyes as she gave both the actor and musician conclusive, blinking looks before slowly backing away, sheltering herself away behind the massive man, blending in to become nothing but an incongruous orange spot hidden behind the dark mass.

There was a terrible, metallic silence cast over the group of five- Zexion took a wary glance between the opposing parties, seeing how the three of the family were staring unwaveringly at Demyx. The musician, in turn, looked ready to shatter, throw up, or just make a very rapid run right out of there.

Suddenly, Demyx's father's huge shoulders dropped, and the stony look on his face softened. "Myde," he murmured, "let's all go to talk together somewhere more private," he gestured with one arm, seeming to sweep the entire group with the motion, and led them all out through the gates. Zexion hesitated, trailing behind everyone, watching the trudging gait of Demyx as he followed just in front of him. He'd left the two glasses of wine forgotten on the snack table.

The group relocated away from the needle-like, prying eyes and stood just beneath a palm tree, the wide view of the tempestuous sea visible beyond the beach and verde. Zexion shook his head, bringing a hand to his head to control his straying locks of hair, and reverted his attention to the reunited family. His tongue rolled in his mouth, tempting him to speak, to bring one fell, fatal verbal swoop and finish this entire thing for all time- but no, this was Demyx's battle. He was only here to... to...

Here to _what?_

He stared at the gravel ground, uncertain of the clenching of his chest- was he _ashamed?_

"Myde," Demyx's father was saying, rocky voice growing strangely gentle, "you've lost a lot of weight. Have you been eating regularly?" His shiny black suede shoes shifted about, gaining an efficient, steadfast stance, and Zexion's eyes followed them determinedly.

The young man at his side fidgeted. "Yeah... I have, don't worry."

"You're short on money, aren't you?"

Zexion then looked, to find Demyx frowning, puzzled, aquamarine eyes pooled with uncertainty. He didn't look quite like he believed what he was hearing. "Well- yes, to be honest," he sighed, "but I... That's not what I came here for."

"You've lost weight, you're short on money, and your phone service has been cut off. Your mother and I have been worrying, you know," he smiled warmly, reaching out and jabbing a finger gently at Demyx's forehead, making the young man go cross-eyed following it. "We've been wanting to tell you."

"T-tell me what?" the musician flinched back, warily side-glancing at Zexion, who helplessly stood by. The scheming actor had to admit, this certainly wasn't playing out the way he'd been seeing it in his head. He bit into his lip and nodded to Demyx faintly, a motion barely caught between the two of them before the musician's attention was back on his father.

His father has his arms outstretched, and a gravelly chuckle rocked the air. Even as his wife and daughter peered on at his side, smiling nervously, he himself seemed completely at ease with the chilling pre-rain air that heaved and pulsed around them. "Well, that we forgive you, of course. Sometimes a kid just has a lapse in judgement, and fights arise... But we forgive you because we love you, Myde. We never disowned you- you are still entitled to the family estate."

Demyx blinked, cautious stance dropping at the words '_we love you'_. "I... really?" he grinned, "I... you know, I came here just to make peace. You don't have to take me back or anything- I'm happy. I just... I didn't want us to hate each other any more, so this is... great." He chuckled.

"But first," the mother spoke up abruptly, concernedly gesturing to Zexion, causing the young man in question to stare, taken aback a little at the meticulously manicured finger pointing his way, "how much was that? A rip-off, I reckon, seeing how you couldn't even pay your phone bill after getting it."

"Wh-what?" his cool guise was betrayed by the leaping, unpredictable lapse his strong voice took on, still watching the irreverent gesturing hand directing the attention onto him.

Demyx's father shook his head, like he was lamenting a tragedy of the world. "Well, that he was male and none other than _that _Ienzo Ishida-_that_ surprised me, son, but... What an investment!" he roared with a short, shocking burst of laughter, before sobering swiftly and continuing- "He's been nothing but bad for you. From the very beginning. I'm saying this as your father. First it was those silly movies, and once that blessed_ incident _came about, I thought we were running home free and we could get all that childish nonsense out of your head before it was too late. Then your little lapse in judgement, and those fantasies, but I'm sure you're mature enough to know that they were meaningless now that you're back.

"But now, here's this _whore_ again," he shrugged, "you've got to lose the gigolo, for your own sake, Myde. Nothing good ever comes out of them. You need that good money for something better, like phone bills and new suits, you know," he joked, brush-like eyebrows quirking provokingly. "Now, of course, this is just another lapse in judgement. I'll forgive you as soon as you-"

Zexion couldn't even believe what he was hearing. Wide-eyed, he blinked to the beat of the abuse firing his way, calmness falling away as his arms trembled at his sides, words blanking out in his head. Wet, softened, torn paper- the words of his mind gone with it... And Demyx-

Demyx looked increasingly hurt, his teeth biting viciously into his lip and his cheeks reddening, lifting, eyes growing glassy with restrained emotion. Raising his head weakly, he tried, "He's not a prostitute, he's an actor-"

"He's the whole core of everything that's dirtied my poor son from the very beginning. All this queer business, performing arts... _Really_, Myde, it's just like a dirt that you can wash off if you just let us. Come back to us."

Demyx blew it. Those formerly pacific, aquamarine eyes blazed with absolute rage. "Shut _up,"_ the young man cried, shaking, raising his hand and spontaneously raising an invisible barrier between his father and himself and Zexion. "Shut _up,_ he's not a _whore,_ we're not_ - __**you!**__ You, _just,_ you..._ I can't call you... I don't _know._ I can't- I came here... hoping that we could just- just patch things up, you know?" he hissed, running hands through his hair like he wanted to tear it out in frustration. "But... _you._ You've got... hehe- you've got the wrong guy, sir- totally. I don't know who _your _son is, but a straight marine biology student, some... I dunno, some sycophant who's just going to deny that he's gay or that he wants to be a musician just because you want him to... that's just wrong!_"_

He took a breath, eyes widening like he was surprised at the words that had left his own mouth. The crisp zephyrs from the sea blew in through them, sending the palm trees above rustling inappropriately as soon as he finished speaking. Giving Zexion an uncertain look, one that begged for assistance and said _Don't you dare speak right now_ both at the same time, he seemed to muster up some form of unpredictable resolution in himself and turned back to the front he'd erected with his family.

Zexion hated to see families as sundered as this one- and knowing that it was partially their own fault for tearing themselves up from the insides. Demyx's father and mother's cheerful, accepting demeanour had frozen and shattered, melted, and bled into the air, leaving them to stand, nodding, faces sober. Unbearably sober, in fact, like they were just running through their minds, _Oh, he's hopeless now, dear. What a pity. What a loss. What an investment gone bad._

Zexion couldn't stand it. His hands clenched into fists by his side, turning white just from squeezing as hard as he was, digging his nails ferociously into his palms.

"I just... I just came here to make peace," he heard Demyx stammer clumsily after a moment, pitifully. "I'm sorry. I'm... I'm Demyx, I _am _your son, I... I like _guys_. I work as a musician in a play... And I'm sorry for that just now- I'm sorry. No matter what it sounds like sometimes, and what happened, I never hated you- I _can't. _Just... please," he murmured softly, subdued, "please. Just take me as I am, Mom, Dad. That's all I want. P-please don't... hate me."

His voice oscillated, sounding like an accumulation of tears welling up in his eyes. The last words were barely audible. Certainly sounding less assured and strong as the brief blinks of lightning that illuminated the sea in passing flashes.

His parents still hadn't moved, rooted to the spot like stubborn trees. Finally, his mother stepped forward, crossing her arms and letting her makeup-caked face fall into a remorseful grimace. "Our doors are always opened for our son, because we love him. Our son is in his early twenties, blond-brunette, a dashing _heterosexual_ young man interested in majoring in _marine biology _at Hollow Bastion College," she said steadily, "...if you've ever seen him around, before, perhaps? We never disowned Myde, and we still love him. But you... You're _filth_. Do you understand? _Filth._"

The oncoming storm stopped for one moment, and the breeze fell limply from the air, letting it fill with the stale aftertaste of her words. Demyx's hopeful expression dropped altogether at the sound of the grinding word... _filth._ The young man nodded slowly, accepting the words, not seeming desirous to return them with any sort of his own. He took the blow and crumbled.

And after he'd lingered for as long as he seemed to want to absorb the moment, he nodded again and turned on his heel, slowly plodding away down the sidewalk area of the neighbourhood. With the cool breeze sweeping in over them and leaving the teenage daughter of the family to shiver and hug herself, Demyx's had disappeared, presence as solid as an apparition that had just slipped away from reality.

Crushing reality that left Zexion with the three members of a family he didn't know. The actor looked steadily over the three of them, pretending that _he_ was the appraising one in charge, though innately he was fair certain that they all would have liked nothing better than to lay their fair share of abuse on him. As he looked at those watchful, scathing faces, and they looked right back, he thought, _What the hell am I standing here for? _He could turn away and follow Demyx and run away from those eyes, or at least he should have been able to- but he _couldn't. _Wasn't some of this his fault, in some way? Perhaps if he hadn't come along, had trusted his own judgement better, he'd have somehow not soured the meeting- _somehow._

_What can you __**do?**_

"The play he's participating in," he coolly said, "is called _Final Limit._ Opening night is in less than two months. Your son loves music, and, I would understand that he loves you all very much as well. If you could attend, he would be very happy."

Zexion wasn't sure what he was expecting for saying that. Maybe nothing- maybe just the shame of ever having talked and interfered in this venomous business.

He got a stinging slap to the face, so hard and forceful that he tasted the small slivers of coppery blood pooling in his mouth as soon as the stinging receded. Wincing back, he instinctively touched his cheek, hurt gaze watching the woman who'd laid the blow on him to begin with. She was unmoving, still like a statue caught in a graceful motion. Her rouged lips did not tremble or grimace in disgust; instead, they fixed in a perfect, meaningful poker face. Her green eyes were narrowed into catlike slits that never wavered from the prey she'd just struck out at.

It was the father who slowly enunciated, "Musicians and actors, gays..." stepping forth and pulling his wife back, then bringing his entire family back, away from Zexion, "...and _whores._ All aberrations. You tell me the difference, Ishida. _You_ ruined my son."

Zexion maintained his level stare, all anger steaming under control beneath his flesh. Hand dropping from his cheek, he stood stubbornly, remaining there until the family silently turned around as one and walked back towards the house.

He wanted to shout something, _anything _to their backs. Call them cowards. Reject them with words worse than what they'd burned into Demyx's mind. But in some way, he felt like the battle was long lost.

And somehow, turning around promptly and walking away from the scene, he felt like the war was- in a twisted, sick but definite way- won.

_**End of chapter thirteen**_


	15. Chapter 15

_**Chapter Fourteen**_

Demyx was already there, revving up the bike, when he came back. His face and expression was obscured completely by the tinted film of his helmet, leaving Zexion to almost _not_ imagine the pained look that must have been dancing in his eyes at that very moment. Wordlessly, Zexion mounted upon the motorcycle seat, leaning forward and wrapping his arms around the quavering body of the musician, tasting the blood slowly seeping into his mouth – an interesting reminder of the slap he'd taken.

The silence continued, filled only by the roaring of thunder and angry swirling of disturbed, black clouds just overhead, and Demyx leaned and kicked off the motorcycle.

They raced down the road, making a vigorous U-turn at one point before tearing down the deserted route back to the southern side of the island. As they passed by the upper-class neighbourhood, Zexion blinked, watching the house disappear in a snap - _Now you see it, now you don't, _he thought with a cutting smile, before turning to rest his head against the firm surface of his driver's back. To their left, there was nothing but blackened, angry sea, and there was something morbidly reassuring about it.

The light drizzle began to gently pelt at the two young men at about the time they began ascending the winding route around the hilly area, but Demyx didn't even begin to slow down as the tiny spatters of liquid stung his bare fists. If anything, he sped up to dangerous speeds, turning and leaning riskily close to the edge of the haphazard road, feeling Zexion's hands nervously grasp at his bursting chest.

There was something hot, boiling in his eyes and making seeing difficult through that the cold assault of rain. If only he could just breathe steady and let the imploding feeling in his head not break out just yet.

As they began heading closer inland and the road widened considerably, the ineffectual drizzle gradually turned heavy, and by the time Demyx turned and braked the screeching, protesting motorcycle and just barely brushed by the roadside borderline beneath the sheltering bridge that the highway passed under, the rain had escalated to a vast deluge.

Demyx pulled off his helmet, swearing indistinctly and clambering off the seat, pressing his hand against Zexion's chest like that other man had been doing in the last twenty minutes, firmly pushing him off the motorcycle, muttering something between them about keeping raincoats beneath the seat. "Dammit, dammit, where'd I keep it?" Demyx hissed as he cranked the seat up, sifting through the paraphernalia hidden beneath it. Some of it was Cloud's stuff, stuff he didn't recognise, and that just made him run off a few more small expletives as he pushed aside miscellaneous repair tools and materials. "I'm sure I've got... something here..." he trailed off, hearing his own voice break very faintly, mixed with the deafening sound of pouring rain.

He stopped searching, just leaning over the motorcycle compartment, finding his vision turning into a useless blur. The only warm thing he felt was the hot tears that abruptly began to cascade down his cheeks without any warning at all. "Ugh, gosh, I'm..." he barely mustered, hands lifting to wipe away the pouring, seemingly unstoppable flow of stinging tears. They rolled continuously on, warming and dampening his palms.

He could barely hear Zexion saying his name, softly, as if it wasn't raining cats and dogs just outside and Demyx's hearing wasn't shot by the roaring of his motorcycle engine anyway. "No, just..." he waved off the concerned pair of hands as they attempted to touch him reassuringly. "Don't." He kept his head low, not wanting to let the other man watch the miserable red flush that had come over his face and turned him even more helpless.

Demyx barely restrained a sob, continuing to sift through the myriad of junk before his hands found what he was looking for. One old, slightly moth-eaten light blue raincoat, and a pristine, plastic-wrapped spare he'd initially bought for Marluxia.

"Put this on," he said as he handed the newer, less corroded one to Zexion, hating the cracked feature his voice was taking on. It just _boasted_ that he was crying. "Ugh," he whimpered as a slow sob wracked his whole body and his chest jumped up momentarily, and he hungrily breathed in every moment that he could, almost hyperventilating. Messily he unravelled his raincoat, shaking his hand through the arm, cursing the uncomfortable suit he was unlucky enough to be wearing.

He was stopped in mid-action by Zexion's hand planting itself firmly on his shoulder and squeezing it. "You're not driving us both out into the rain when you can't even see properly," the shorter man sensibly said, before cranking down the motorcycle seat and reclining against it. "And I'm certainly not letting you go to your empty apartment when you're like this."

_What then?_ Demyx wanted to say, frustrated and angry, but he didn't even trust his own voice at the moment. He just looked up painfully, seeing Zexion looking right at him for a moment before his eyes filled up with a fresh batch of tears and he buried his hands in his face.

"We're going to my apartment," Zexion said resolutely, straddling over the motorcycle seat and testily touching the handlebars. "Just tell me, cursorily if you will, how to drive this..."

"You-" Demyx hiccupped, and flushed ashamedly, peering out from his cupped hands to give the man an incredulous look, "c-can't be serious. You can't d-drive- what if you-?"

"Fall asleep? Because of my sleep disorder?" he intervened, blue eyes coolly flicking to show that he'd known the possibility. "There's a chance of it. Yet you can't see a thing, can you? And I don't want to spend any more time out beneath a bridge in the middle of foreign north-island territory than I must."

Demyx cursed again, leaning back against the strong metal strip that separated the road from the green, swampy terrain beneath the bridge. "Y - you're still so... _Zexion-like, _after all of this," he said, faking a smile. "Just let me-" he hiccuped again, "cry this out for a bit, you... big... jerk."

"If you think so," Zexion seemed to shrug. A tiny clench of a worried frown pulled on his features, but Demyx could barely see anyway.

The rain fell like a heavy, continuous assault going on just beyond the tall shelter of the bridge. No cars roared past on that desolate, barely populated end of the island. And Demyx just replayed the last hour in his head, over and over, and let the tears run.

He wasn't sure when, but after a long moment, just when his eyes began to dry and that weary flush initiated taking its toll on his face instead, he might have heard Zexion murmur indistinctly_- "I'm sorry."_

It could have been the deceiving howl of the wind blowing some rain in under the bridge and playing tricks on his hearing for all he knew.

"Where do you live?" Demyx asked finally, wiping away the traces of wetness on his face with his damp, itchy grey sleeves, one still caught in the arm of his raincoat. He was fairly certain he looked the good part of sloppy, awful and tired then, but only Zexion was around and at the moment the man was very politely sitting up straight on the motorcycle seat, silent and watchful.

Zexion pulled back his right arm's solid black shirt sleeve, revealing a flawless stretch of skin, and on it, a loose steel bracelet with a plate dangling from it. Demyx peered in closer, tired eyes blinking to focus on the slightly swinging plate- "_'Hi, I am Zexion, I'm narcoleptic'..._" he snorted, sniffing a little, "_'in an emergency, please contact...'_- geez, is it really safe to put your address and someone's phone number on some bracelet?" he murmured, reading the rest of the text silently, not really committing any of it to memory.

"I have to wear this," Zexion explained calmly, somehow completely audible over the blasting downpour, "in case I fall asleep while out shopping, or something just as preposterous."

Demyx laughed a little. "That sounds like fun."

A little miffed, the actor pulled his arm away, pulling his sleeve down again over the smooth skin. "The point is that it has my address on it. That can be convenient."

The musician felt a warm, new blush come over his face. "Can I make something clear, Zexion?" He shivered as a gust blew in some rain over them.

"Certainly," Zexion looked at him attentively.

"I'm not staying over," Demyx said, all choking emotion draining out of his voice and leaving the rough contours of emotional weariness behind. "I... I want to spend some time alone."

The shorter man looked like he didn't agree to this at all, but he didn't object and nodded almost complaisantly. He swallowed once, and Demyx followed his Adam's apple bobbing hesitantly on the smooth skin of his exposed neck. "If that is what you think is best. Take me home," he said shortly and thickly.

()(())()

Raincoats or no, they were both effectively soaked and shivering by the time Demyx pulled into the parking lot before the tall, elegant apartment complex. The whole vicinity located much deeper into the hills than his own home, and it boasted somewhat more class. Obviously built much more recently than his own meek little edifice, he could already see that the place had a snazzy C.C.T.V. system, glass doors that only opened with cardkeys, and metal elevator doors that were polished so meticulously that Demyx could fix his soggy, limp hair in one.

The rain had grown only more relentless during the duration of the ride, until it found its way beneath the supposedly protective material of their raincoats and soaked their skin and clothes. As Zexion dismounted from the bicycle and removed his raincoat, Demyx had a clear view of his apparently thin black shirt plastering itself to every inch of his skin, until even the light, rounded contours of his nipples were faintly visible. His pants sang a very similar story, unfortunately, and his shoes made cloggy, squashed noises when he so much as shifted about in them. His slate-grey hair was so effectively wet that it more or less clung in strands to the right side of his face, dripping constantly.

The actor did not look pleased at this development, and Demyx didn't run the risk telling him that he looked like he could win a wet shirt contest. Demyx himself was only half-amused and barely distracted - the emotional lead weights in his brain weighed him down so heavily that he only had half the mind to appreciate a wet and bothered Zexion.

"Are you certain you don't want to come in?" the shorter man asked, voice raised louder than usual. Just above their heads was a constant din of pouring rain on metal awnings.

Demyx shook his head and smiled sardonically. "I think that a ride in the rain is just what I need. Not shooting for anything ambitious like composing an album of angst or downing five tubs of ice cream or anything."

He was lying. He felt like over-doing it just this once and riding all over the entire island, just watching the road blur in and out of sight in front of him. He felt like riding down a beach and crashing his bike into the sharp beds of rocks up north. He felt like crawling all over those rocks on hands and knees, if only to feel the igneous rock edges lacerate into his flesh. He felt like forgetting, and sometimes that was very difficult to do.

Worst of all, Zexion seemed to be painfully aware that Demyx's mouth was spewing untruths at the rate of one feigned grin per sentence. The actor nodded anyway, half-lidded gaze not hiding any of the natural scrutiny he threw upon Demyx's every action. "If you say so." It seemed like Zexion had been saying all that- _'If you say so', 'If you think so', _for the last hour. It made Demyx want to do something- _anything-_ to just make those blue eyes widen in shock like they had when he'd first touched upon the topic of Zexion's past.

But then, this was how Demyx was left when his _own_ past was chafed against. He felt too empty to conjure a semblance of sympathy with the man.

He just wanted to be alone.

He made a small sound of surprise when Zexion drew in close to him, and the man clicked his tongue in a small sound of bemused disapproval. "We've hugged before, what is the fuss about?" he said as he efficiently moved his hands over his wrists, pulling back his black sleeves and fumbling on the tiny clasp of his bracelet. Before Demyx knew it, the _'Hi, I'm Zexion, I'm narcoleptic!'_ bracelet was pressing into the skin of his own wrist, and Zexion was fixing it on for him.

"W-what's this for?"

The slate-grey-haired man looked up at him like there was nothing weird about giving somebody your narcolepsy awareness bracelet. "There is my address. If you ever want to visit, or call, you're welcome to at all hours. Even at ungodly hours of the night; I will be awake. Tell the guard at the front gate that you know me. I'll leave a spare key beneath the welcome mat. You can give the bracelet back when..."_ When you get your sanity together,_ Zexion didn't say. "...When it's time."

Demyx looked at his own arm and the bracelet around it. It was still warm from being worn by the actor. And Demyx's sight was as good as ever to read the long, precise address on it. "Yeah," he said at last. "All right. Yeah." It was all he seemed to have the capacity to say anymore.

Pulling out of the parking lot and leaving Zexion and his classy apartment behind, he didn't even bother with a raincoat any more. Bike roaring to be heard over the clamour of the rain, Demyx only accelerated as he disappeared into the mist.

()(())()

If you asked him, Demyx wouldn't be able to tell you how long he rode for. He rode until it was long after sunset, long after the storm ceased to be nothing but weak rumbles of thunder in the night, cursorily lighting up the black of the sky. He rode north again, this time going straight through the core of the city, watching the cars and bikes swirl around him like debris caught in a whirlpool. Later on he wasn't even to recall what he thought about, but he thought about a thousand things. Distinctly, there was Selphie, _she's probably sitting on the couch and crying she probably fought with Mom and Dad she's probably never going to forgive mewhatdidIdo?_ About his mother and father, _fuckthemfuckthemfuckdammit I can't hate them why can't I hate them?_ About Zexion, _I could see every curve of him and he never batted an eye it's like he saw every inch of me just then he never batted an eye._

He stopped at an isolated gas stop and refilled his sputtering, protesting motorcycle with fuel with some of the scraps from the bottom of his barrel of resources, and spent the final wad of ones in his wallet on a can of coffee and some sea salt ice cream, which he ate while he sat on a high rock on the most isolated end of the island, watching the rising moon make streams of silver on the snaking rivers in the low beds of land miles below him. When he finished, he stuck the ice cream stick into the tab of the coffee can and tossed it into a musty-looking garbage bin that encourage recycling.

He considered stopping at a lonely, old pay phone and calling Zexion, Axel, or maybe even Marluxia, if only to hear another voice to mute out all the memories resounding in his brain, but he figured that that would just give him a headache. The constant song of the cicadas and various other animals of the night blasted over his ears instead as he rode through the winding, mountainous ends of the island. In the moonlight, Zexion's bracelet glistened and outline his wrist.

At some point, he threw out his itchy grey jacket to the wind and rode, freezing and feeling slow tugs of sleep, in his dress-shirt.

And finally, Demyx stopped at the side of a rode on a route that headed to the southern side of the island, shivered, and wanted to smack himself for being so dumb. He'd ridden, he'd thought, he'd felt like shit, he'd eaten and drank and now he felt like hitting his head against his motorcycle for being such an idiot.

_Geez,_ he shuddered, hugging his arms close to himself and watching the lights go out gradually, like a blanket of darkness, over the city before his eyes, _I _still_ feel like crap._ The moon, directly above his head by then, seemed like the only constant, reliable source of light in the world. And in its consistent streams of light, Demyx could barely discern the digits and the address engraved on the cold bracelet Zexion had wrapped around his arm and seemingly engraved into his flesh.

Squinting in the darkness, Demyx decided to read, and in reading, he was fully able to forget the constant pain.

Like a child, he just wanted Zexion. At that moment, Zexion meant a pair of arms to maybe wrap around him like they had before, keep him warm, and not resent him for who he was. Zexion meant an unforgettable pair of eyes that he'd fought, bled, cried and broken for.

Revving up his bike again and resolving to head to a house that felt more like home than his own, Demyx thought to himself through nonexistent tears that if he ever recovered from this, he'd never break down again. In walking away, he'd resolved to hold on to who he was and not give in.

Sure, it hurt like hell to think about rejecting the first sixteen-something years of his life, but he was hoping that Zexion could help with that part.

()(())()

It took him another twenty minutes to find Zexion's apartment complex again in the darkness. At that unknown hour of the night, the world Demyx had written in his head had suddenly turned into a new language of barely-lit road signs and nightlights to guide his way down the wet, cold road. The guard let him in without so much as a second look, and he rolled in with his exhausted-yet-faithful bike, taking a tiny parking space where he could get it among the vehicles of residents, crammed together in uniform, steely lines.

He was slightly amused that he was right- you really _could_ fix your hair in the shiny elevator doors. The abrupt neon light seemed foreign and glaring to him, and in the clear reflections he could see a haggard-looking young man who looked like he was low on sleep, love and money all together. He may have been.

He really looked bad. As the elevator doors mechanically wrenched open and Demyx stepped in and searched for the button that said '_6', _he hoped a little that Zexion would recognise him and not take him for a burglar or a drug addict or something.

Boy, that would be a great topping for his day.

Smiling, Demyx leaned against the metal walls and imagined. What would Zexion be doing? Laying on his bed? Would he be reading a book? Would he be trying to sleep?

_ What does he sleep in?_

Demyx opened his eyes at this one question, but his imagination just kept on running, kept on showing him flashes of the pointed lines and distinct shades that indicated Zexion's body beneath his black shirt plastered to his skin. He must have changed out of that shirt by now. Peeled it off and absentmindedly discarded it to the dryer. Absentmindedly...

He shook his head and fell back against the white, fresh walls. And then he shook himself again and began walking. Face flushed, he hoped that the sudden interest his mind had taken in mentally undressing an imaginary Zexion would flag by the time he reached apartment number six of the sixth floor.

Demyx tried to distract himself by telling himself about the numerical sameness in Zexion's address. It really didn't do anything. He felt like a criminal waddling awkwardly through the night. Hell, he felt like an intruder in his own life, coming in and screwing everything over. Well, screwing over everything that wasn't already a mess.

Finally he reached the apartment, running his slim olive hands down the steely, unwelcoming grille before gazing downwards- satisfied that his body had stopped rebelling against him- and seeing the gloomy 'WELCOME' mat splayed on the floor just beyond the grille, well in reach, on the clean, tiled, dimly-lit floor. Kneeling, Demyx clawed in the darkness, not really sure of what he was doing himself. A dozen of the apartments he'd passed had had similar welcome mats- heck, it was probably a freebie that came along with every lot- who was saying that he'd gotten the right house? Maybe he was wrong... somehow.

There was a slow _clink_ to cement all his lingering hopes when he found, unsurprisingly, a small key beneath the mat. Just barely in reach. Demyx blinked. He wouldn't have been surprised if it was all somehow a bad joke, considering the way his day had gone, so the reassuring presence of the key made him raise an eyebrow and smile hesitantly.

Standing, he opened the grille and stepped inside, politely slipping off his shoes and putting them next to Zexion's boots on the sole shoe rack that furnished the otherwise bare hallway just between the security gate and the front door. The security of this place was rather impressive to Demyx. He rolled the gate shut behind himself and locked it back, pleased that it barely made a sound. Creeping about in the dark like this, Demyx remotely reminded himself of a husband sneaking home long after hours, and he couldn't make himself grin sardonically at that. Zexion would kill him, if he was still awake.

_Didn't he say it would be okay if I crept about at ungodly hours?_

Demyx tried the front door and found, more pleasant still, that it was unlocked. Compliantly it clicked open and he only had to lightly pull for the massive wooden door to pull open, and revealed the apartment. The place, airily ventilated, didn't stink of old books and ink and mould like that backroom at the theatre did, but it had a certain bookish aura to it notwithstanding. From a cursory glance in the darkness, Demyx could tell that the entire place was comprised of about five rooms- on his left Zexion had a bathtub in his blue-tiled bathroom, a decent-sized kitchen on his right, and a decent view of what looked like a golf-field (lit by cool night-lights that made Demyx think of romance) from the huge windows-for-walls on one end of the living room. A basket of fruits sat on the coffee table, and the sofas were a dull shade of grey. The entire place had a quality of meticulous cleanliness to it, but with barely any lighting Demyx really didn't know how to judge.

He guessed, though, that the door nearest to him, cracked open and telling of nothing but darkness, was the door to Zexion's room. Making good on that guess, Demyx ambled across the frigid white tile floor, and gave the door a light push, watching as it creaked slowly. Beyond it was mostly obscured by the thick veil of night and a lack of lighting, but his adjusted eyes could barely discern the bed just beyond the door. And the old, wistful smell of books was something he didn't need to see to understand. Something about this just told him that this really was Zexion's room.

He strode in quietly, almost skulking, watching how unmoving the barely-outline figure on the bed was. Zexion's room didn't need a light, he realised- his room was illuminated well enough by the lights of the city that the windows faced. Glittering blinks of gem-like city lights stretched across the land, like they were making up for the absence of stars in the sky, and the light painted the contours of Zexion's curled up beneath white blankets on this cold night.

Somehow, the actor was getting some sleep tonight. Demyx felt almost good for him.

The musician needed warmth, which was why the dull-looking couch was not an option. Slowly he dropped his knees at the edge of the mattress, and from that one movement onwards his body folded with easy compliance, and on the bed he crawled into the small space that Zexion's curled, blanketed figure left him. By then he was numb, uncaring, and his eyes were already unseeing, too blurred by sleepiness to discern any feeling but the _warmth_ of Zexion's small figure pressed up against him. He reached out his long, lanky arms and wrapped them around the blanket-covered figure, feeling how small, how _fragile_ and glasslike those bones were in his arms.

_Yeah, definitely Zexion_, Demyx thought, lips quirking upwards tiredly as he drifted into a fatigued man's sleep. Sleep, to forget everything. Sleep, just to rest his tired heart.

Finally, unconsciousness came very easily to him that night.

()(())()

He didn't dream of the day that had changed his life.

Instead, he dreamed about being five years old, skinny like toothpicks all stuck together, and better at swimming than walking. Hearing his mom and dad talking about how swimming was such a great skill because he could see the sea, too. That hazy world his mind took him into to stand in the stead of reality was one filled with the colour of aquamarine that he'd initially thought only existed in his mommy's eyes. His own eyes. Streams of coral red and green and orange were like signals beaming on and off in his brain, all blended with seas of aquamarine. The sea and water, where he felt most at home for a lot of his life.

Water. Rainwater was pure and washed away all his misdoings. Seawater was salty and washed away all his pain.

And then there were those blue eyes that were a deeper shade of blue than the shallow azure seawater. And then there were days of music where he'd found a lot of expression and a worldly, almost existential purpose in his life. In the end, while water seemed to be as prominent in his life as the blood running through his veins, it was the music that kept that blood flowing with some kind of feeling of belonging. He wasn't sure if he could really be happy anymore without that sense of existence. If he lost that sense of existence, he felt like he might just dissolve into the water and disappear like a drop of blood into the enormous ocean.

Hearing his mom and dad talk about how he should concentrate on reading his books instead of playing. Watching his dad pick up his first sitar and take it out to the nearest incinerator. Raising Selphie.

Hearing his own failing voice and realising it was better for singing than shouting at his parents. Thinking about how his ears would much rather be listening to streams of music than streams of resentfulness.

Hearing singing. Soft, sweet, powerful notes in a child's voice, pouring, note by note, some form of satisfaction into his bones.

()(())()

Feeling warmth when he first woke up in the morning was a weird and relatively foreign concept to Demyx by then. If it was really warm when he first woke up, it would be in the unpleasant, stick and sweaty way that evinced that he'd slept in until the sun was high in the sky and pouring streams of hot, _hot_ light into his room. This sort of temperature, however, was different. When he breathed in, sleepily, he found himself smelling a light bit of food, maybe bacon, and lavender. Standard smell of somebody he happened to be more than a little acquainted with...

Never mind that, though. Whatever position his body was in, it was in the pinnacle of comfort. If not for his curiousity getting the better of him, Demyx was tempted to drift directly back into a wonderful sleep.

He tried to move and he found that he was perfectly intertwined with Zexion. In the way that two puzzle-pieces are stuck and bent together and if one moves it's still going to jam up the other, their limbs folded and fit against each other like a masterpiece.

Once Demyx got over how _comfortable_ it was, he found it _really damn awkward_. They were both on their sides, and somehow in the long hours of the night Zexion had turned from facing away to facing directly into his chest. His left arm was planted very nicely, stuck beneath Zexion's warm, translucently pale neck, and his right one was draped all over the shorter man's partly-exposed torso. The bed sheet was clumsily thrown over both of them. Their legs were successfully and completely tangled together. Demyx could vaguely discern Zexion's toes fitted slightly against his.

And then, in a painful and heart-stopping moment, Demyx realised that Zexion's eyes were open and they were staring blankly into his white dress-shirt. Zexion was awake and had been for heaven-knew-how-long.

Suddenly, the super-comfortable temperature went way, way up.

"G-guh!" Demyx sputtered in a vague, stupid attempt at saying 'good morning' to the man he was currently intertwined with. "Good morning?" he tried again, with all the doubt of a man who had just done something very, very stupid and is looking to the nearest person for reassurance that he was just as stupid as what he had just done. In other words, he was slightly afraid of how Zexion would react to waking up with his limbs practically tied around a skinny musician who hadn't changed but hey, he wasn't _wet_ or anything, all that riding in the freezing cold night and the sea breeze coming over the hills sure took care of _that-_

"Good morning," Zexion said very calmly, before stretching his arms a little and letting his bed mate realise just where the his arms _were_: nicely fitted just behind his back. Under his shirt. Where he'd been undoubtedly holding him for the better part of the night.

Suddenly, he really, really needed to untangle and turn away and maybe do something about a little... Problem southwards.

Zexion looked at him quite levelly and said his name, like he was just slowly beginning to assess the situation himself, "Demyx." It came out slow, like a purr, and the sleepy huskiness sidled into that name and turned it almost... almost...

The musician lurched for real this time, hitting snags in the human knot he'd tied with Zexion and desperately pushing to get out of them. Finally, in a jerk of finality, he attempted to roll over and face away.

In his noble attempt, he broke free, and hit his nose on the wall that Zexion's bed faced. Whining in slight pain, the musician curled up and lay there.

He vaguely heard Zexion sit up next to him. "It's still early," the actor noted flatly as he shifted about, not regarding his bedmates odd behaviour. A long period silence fell over them like a thin blanket. Where Zexion was undoubtedly looking at him and thinking about what a weird little schmuck he was, crawling into his apartments at ungodly hours and huddling into his beds like a needy child.

Demyx wasn't expecting it when a small hand, seemingly more fragile than he'd ever noticed before, settled on his shoulder, and the man beside him asked him, "How do you feel? After everything, I mean."

What a question. "After everything," he murmured, pulling the sheet closer around himself, hoping it could cover him up a little. Closing his eyes and wishing he could go back to sleep and shut everything out for once, Demyx said, "After everything... I guess it's like I finally told off that loud old lady next door and she's not making noise any more. Like I threw up a four-hundred-thousand munny cuisine because I drank too much wine. Like I'm starting a new chapter when I still want to reread the last one. I can't describe it, Zexion..." He burrowed his head into the space where the mattress and the wall met. "I just want to sleep."

He could practically see Zexion nodding behind him. "I see," he said, in that calm, _Zexion_ way of his. "Absorb the blow at your own time." And then, unexpectedly, "Do you want breakfast?"

Demyx groaned.

...Breakfast?

"Breakfast," he echoed his muddled thoughts, finally feeling safe enough to roll over and look Zexion in the eye. The actor was sitting up, one leg hanging off the bed, propped up on his arms and gazing serenely upon him. "What time 'sit? Isn't it... too early to even think about breakfast?" he mumbled.

The shorter man shook his head, fingers running down over his pyjamas, straightening them out. "It's seven on Monday morning. Storm clouds and the autumn equinox ensure the sun's late arrival."

He blinked, and asked the question that had been raring to be asked since he'd found the man's eyes opened. "How long have you been awake, anyway?"

"Since three. I didn't want to wake you, so I didn't move."

"...Damn. I'm sorry."

"Don't offer any apologies and I won't either," Zexion said curtly, before unexpectedly leaning in, reaching out and brushing back the messy hair in Demyx's face. "Four hours," he added.

"Four hours?" he looked back, bemused.

The actor nodded, "I've had four hours awake to think this over very thoroughly."

Demyx wasn't expecting what happened next. He wasn't expecting the actor to be breaking any strange, paper wall of fear between the two of them. He had no preconception of the idea that Zexion would be the one to rush in to him and tear down every worry, every anxiety, with a simple motion- like the anvil of absolution that he always had been.

He wasn't expecting to find his lips locked with Zexion's.

It was strange, because one of them had been laying down and another had been sitting up, it was odd because Dem was still a bit sluggish, _and it was wonderful_. Reaching out, he touched Zexion's soft, mussed-up hair and gently urged him further into the kiss, loving the soft, slightly dry touch of his lips against his own.

It was tender and sleepy, just the way wake-up kisses are in the early hours of the morning. It tasted like nothing but warmth of body contact and the coolness of the beginning of a day. It felt like softness and Zexion.

Zexion pulled back, and when Demyx opened his eyes and blinked in surprise, he found that their eyes had met. In the grey pre-twilight, that was all he saw: Zexion leaning just above him and holding a gaze. And then Zexion nodded, looking satisfied with something Demyx may or may not have known, and he stood up. "I'm going to make breakfast," he said, "so you may enjoy another ten minutes of precious sleep before I must insist you get up and eat."

"Zexion."

The actor halted, frame suddenly stiff with the faintest suggestion of wariness. Mechanically he turned, gazing with blatantly feigned affectation over his shoulder, eyes boring into Demyx. "Yes?"

Demyx smiled. "Thank you."

Something- or maybe nothing at all but the illusion in Demyx's sleep-fogged mind- was shed that moment on Zexion's personage, falling to the floor. It was like a thick, shell-like layer had peeled off with those words, and Zexion smiled- _actually smiled-_, turning around and nodding. "No," he said, "there's no need." Something tender shone through him with so much life, like a spattered, distorted glass panel behind his eyes had spontaneously shattered.

And as he walked out, Demyx's eyes followed his pyjamas-clad figure. And then, the musician dropped back into the pillows and smiled.

()(())()

For many nights to come, he'd ride on his motorcycle out for hours on end, absorbing and accepting the tide his life was sweeping him into. He'd stop at the beach and put his bike on a stand, and walk, sneakers scraping into the glittering white sand, watching the foaming sea draw up and down and paint the shoreline with soaked sand that glistened like myriad gemstones in the sunlight.

For many days to come, he'd spend his time hunched over sheet music, desperately trying to write down the constant melody in his head.

Sometimes, he'd take Zexion on his night trips. Sometimes he would sit down by the shorter man's side and start playing the acoustic version of the melody he'd just attempted to capture and draw into some corporeal form.

And sometimes, often in the proceeding month after that one day, Demyx would come home after hours of watching the moonrise on the northern island shore, and he'd undress by the light of the city beyond the windows and crawl into bed, exhausted and cold but never again broken.

He'd hear, "Welcome home," and feel Zexion's arms slowly wrap around him.

He'd stopped living whatever life of misery or success that may or may not have been written for him. And he had a lot of problems: a play to work on and a life to get into gear after an initial lifetime of misery. But he was working on it.

And for the time being, he was happy just to reach out in the darkness between them to touch his fingers lightly to Zexion's lips, map every line of a faint smile, and know that he really was home.

_**Terminus**_

_**

* * *

**_

_**A/N: Thank you so much for reading! Kindly leave a final review to tell me how you felt- I'd really love to hear what you have to say! The end, the entire story... Anything. Thank you so much for sticking with me through this.**_

_**Due to the fact that a few people do seem to want access to the extras, I decided to make them available on my livejournal, gravitybeams. For a link to Scripted's master post on the journal, kindly visit my profile.**_

_**Once again, thanks for reading! : D  
Over and out, Panzer Panda.**_


End file.
